Attorneys for the Mobile County Commission and the Mobile County Communications District, the local 911 board, are trying to work out what to do with a $770,000 refund that has sat untouched in the bank for more than a year, money returned from a $3.2 million project the county awarded to Harris Corporation back in 2012.
The refund became the focus of a lengthy discussion at a Dec. 10 meeting that ultimately ended with 911 board member Trey Oliver walking out. At the heart of the dispute is a breakdown in communication between the county and the 911 board that appears to have led to a number of duplicate equipment purchases under the board’s 2013 contract with Harris, some of it covering equipment that had already been funded through an earlier deal with the same company.
According to board attorney Jeff Hartley, the original 2012 contract stemmed from a $7 million homeland security grant split between Mobile and Baldwin counties, intended to build a radio system that would let first responders in both counties communicate with each other in real time. Baldwin County used its share to install a server supporting its P-25 Phase I radio system, which Commissioner Skip Gruber said allowed the county’s various public safety agencies to operate on one unified system.
On the Mobile County side, the $3.2 million project awarded to Harris Corporation was meant to build an equivalent P-25 Phase I system. But according to Jeya Selvaratnam, a consultant working with the 911 board, the interoperability the grant was designed to achieve between the two counties never materialized. “Nobody has ever used the [Mobile County] system or made any connectivity to it,” Selvaratnam said. “Somewhere, somebody dropped the ball. So now that system is no longer needed, and what you’re building today is an upgraded system to what you’ve already bought.”
Selvaratnam was referring to the $40 million P-25 Phase II radio system now under construction, a project that has drawn scrutiny from both law enforcement and local media over the past several months. That system was also awarded to Harris Corporation, a year after the original homeland security grant funded the never-used Phase I equipment.
911 board director Gary Tanner did not dispute that someone had dropped the ball, but said it wasn’t the 911 board’s doing. He pointed instead to Mobile County, saying the county received the original grant and the $770,000 Harris refund after determining the grant’s specifications would not allow for certain radio enhancements the county wanted. “Now we want it, if Mobile County will let us have it, to use the money for the same purpose, to enhance current radios to the [Phase II] technology,” Tanner said. “That’s what I understand, but 911 didn’t have anything to do with the grant.”
Other board members, including Oliver, Chairman Stephen Bowden and Rusty Holloway, backed Tanner’s account that the 911 board had no role in managing the original grant. When asked who oversaw the project at the time, Tanner pointed to Eric Linsley, the county’s director of public safety communications, who wrote the specifications for the current Harris project and was also in charge of the 2012 Harris contract, the one that resulted in roughly $2.4 million worth of equipment first responders have never actually used.
Although the county owns most of the existing emergency radio system, all maintenance has been financed by the 911 board since January 2014 through Hurricane Electronics, an authorized Harris products dealer. Linsley and several other qualified county employees were at one point set to transfer employment to the 911 board along with the system, but that plan was shelved after Mobile County Engineer Joe Ruffer abruptly resigned from the board last March. No reason has been given publicly for halting the transition. At last week’s meeting, Tanner said the system’s “leases, assets and everything” were ready to go when the transition stalled, adding that the 911 board was not the one that stopped it.
Before leaving the meeting, Oliver asked whether any of the equipment purchased under the original $3.2 million grant could still be repurposed to save money on the ongoing radio enhancement project. Selvaratnam said a portion could have been used had the board known about it sooner. “We already bought another set already,” he said. “Harris ordered antennas and cables. We could have used the same antenna and cables, but you’ve already purchased more antennas and cables and already installed [them].”
As for the outstanding $770,000 refund, Hartley said the strict terms of the original grant restrict the county from spending it on anything other than emergency radio enhancements. Because Mobile County owns the radio system but does not operate it, the county cannot use the refund itself without finding a way to transfer it to the 911 board, a step Tanner said may require sign-off from the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency.