Baldwin County officials in the summer of 2014 opened a difficult conversation with the cities and volunteer fire departments that shared its countywide emergency radio network: the county wanted help paying to keep the system running.
The network, which allowed police officers, firefighters and other agencies across Baldwin County to talk to one another on a single interoperable system, had been built after the county secured a $4.5 million grant to buy radios and related equipment. Maintaining that investment, however, was proving to be an expense the county did not believe it should shoulder alone.
A $335,000 line in the budget
The county earmarked $335,000 in its proposed fiscal year 2015 budget to cover the cost of maintaining the radio system. Because agencies throughout the county depended on it, commissioners argued, those agencies ought to contribute.
“I really do feel that the municipalities should bear some of the operational cost of this,” Commissioner Mack said during a commission budget meeting in Robertsdale, adding that whether the arrangement began immediately or a year later, “they have got to become partners.”
Brian Peacock, director of the county’s Communications and Information Services, suggested the commission collect a per-radio monthly fee from the agencies that used the network. Peacock explained that maintenance was covered under a warranty included in the system’s original cost, but that warranty was set to expire in July 2015.
Once the warranty ended, Peacock said, about $44,000 would be needed to keep the system maintained through the rest of 2015. After that, annual maintenance was projected to cost roughly $85,000 a year. He also floated the option of a $289,000-a-year Motorola hardware and software service agreement for the network.
Fire departments push back
The proposal did not sit easily with the volunteer fire community. Raymond Lovell, president of the Baldwin County Fire Chiefs Association, said agencies had been assured years earlier, when the system was first installed, that joining early would spare them from paying maintenance costs.
“We were all told in a meeting, which was a recorded meeting,” Lovell said. “It wasn’t we thought we wouldn’t have to pay this. It was we will not have to pay.”
Commissioner Mack said he did not recall such a promise, but added that if it could be shown the county had made that commitment, he was confident the county would honor it.
Lovell, who also served as a deputy chief at the Loxley Volunteer Fire Department, said his department simply could not afford a yearly contribution. He noted that the department operated 29 handheld radios and had already paid a matching grant fee to obtain them. The radios’ batteries, he said, lasted only eight to 12 months before needing replacement, at a cost of $200 to $300 each.
He predicted that other agencies would object as well. “We will just have to sit down with them and talk to them about it,” Lovell said. “There’s going to be people that’s going to blow up about them even asking about this money.”
Little choice, commissioners said
For county leaders, the request was less about willingness than necessity. Commissioner Skip Gruber said the county had no realistic alternative to asking its partner agencies for help.
“If they say no, they say no,” Gruber said. “There is nothing we can do about it.”
The exchange captured a familiar tension in local government: a shared public-safety asset, paid for once with grant money, that still carried real recurring costs. The radios allowed departments across Robertsdale, Loxley and the rest of Baldwin County to coordinate during emergencies, but the equipment, software and service contracts behind that convenience would not maintain themselves.
- $4.5 million — the grant that funded the original system
- $335,000 — set aside in the FY2015 budget for maintenance
- July 2015 — when the manufacturer’s warranty was to expire
- $85,000 — projected annual maintenance cost after 2015
As the budget discussions continued, the county and its municipalities faced the task of deciding, together, how to keep a system that thousands of residents would never see but might one day depend upon.