800MHz supervisors misled public

Fauquier County, Virginia

At the January 2002 Board of Supervisors meeting at which four supervisors voted to purchase a Motorola 800MHz radio system, then-chairman Ray Graham had this to say: “But even (if we) commit to an 800Mhz public radio system, should the frequencies or towers or something be amiss, we have the right at any time to stop the action with minimal penalty …We will have the opportunity to say, ‘Timeout, we quit, we’re going a different route.’ So that’s seven months from now.”

Seven months later something was indeed seriously amiss — and the problem continues to this day. Sixteen months have now elapsed since Fauquier Supervisors rushed to commit the county to buy a Motorola 800MHz radio system, and the county is still lacking two of the five “starter-set” towers specified by Motorola, which Fauquier is obliged to provide. When the contract was awarded, then-chairman Graham told citizens the five towers were “available” and “no new towers” would be required.

Graham misled the citizens on both counts, and none of the other supervisors challenged him. When seven months had elapsed, why didn’t these supervisors call “timeout” and tell Motorola “we’re going a different route ?”

In fact, only two of the five allegedly “available” towers were actually available. The $7.2 million system price tag shown to the citizens in January 2002 did not include any new tower costs. As it is, the county will have to build at least three new towers. Construction of the first of these was recently completed at a cost of over $250,000. The tower is located on a highly restricted federal government facility where it will not be accessible to commercial users. Thus the county will not be able to derive any lease revenue from this tower to offset the construction cost.

County officials are planning to construct a second new tower on a site purchased by the county in the Morrisville [Virginia] area. Invitations for bid by tower construction companies has just been released. By the time construction is completed it will be late summer.

A third new tower, located on Blue Mountain, is to be constructed on a site owned by the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries but purchased with federal funds. Federal approval will be required before any work can be done on that site, and county officials apparently have no idea when the approval might be received.

It will be close to two years after Graham told us the towers were “available”(implying no added real estate or construction costs) before the five specified towers are finally in place — the county taxpayers having paid to build three of them at a total cost yet to be determined. It remains to be seen how many more towers will ultimately be needed to make this system perform to specification.

Thanks to the county’s mishandling of tower acquisition, public safety personnel will have to wait at least another year for new radios. Motorola has officially advised the county that unless all the towers are available to them by July 1, 2003, they will not be able to complete system testing this summer and early fall, while the foliage is still full. It is dense foliage that defeats the 800MHz radio signal; so testing at any other time of the year is meaningless. Since all five towers will not be available until long after July 1, 2003, county officials are now moving to delay the system testing until the summer of 2004 — two-and-one half years after contract award. It’s a matter of conjecture as to how long the testing will take and the system finally becomes operational. That will depend on how many more towers and transmitter-receivers are ultimately needed to meet the performance requirements.

The experience of Fairfax County, Washington, D.C., and Anne Arundel County, Maryland, has been that more towers and equipment than were originally specified proved necessary. The Anne Arundel system, initially estimated to cost $15 million is now projected to cost $35 million, prompting supervisors to consider canceling the project and writing off what has already been spent. When Supervisors Graham, Weeks, McCamy, and Winkleman voted to purchase the system citizens were led to believe the cost would only be about $7 million to $8 million. Using data provided to me by county officials, I can account for project costs of about $14 million (including loan interest), and we don’t even have all the towers in place.

While the foregoing doesn’t auger well for Fauquier’s 800Mhz project, the situation gets worse due to converging national issues. The FCC is in the midst of a nearly two-year effort to “replan” the 800MHz frequency band to lessen interference to public safety frequencies by commercial users. It is taking FCC engineers, planners, and administrators longer than anticipated to sort this problem out since major U.S. corporations have billions of dollars at stake in this issue and are engaged in intensive lobbying to influence the outcome. The fact that the public safety users will have to move off the currently assigned public safety frequencies is an accepted certainty. It now appears likely, however, that the realignment may be accomplished in stages, with public safety users moving to another segment of the 800MHz band initially, and subsequently moving to their final frequency assignments in the 700MHz band.

This is a “double-whammy” for Fauquier taxpayers, as each move will require system and equipment changes resulting in considerable additional cost. About the time we have finished paying for the system, portions of it will be obsolete.

I previously estimated the “life-cycle” cost of the Fauquier 800MHz system at more than $20 million. In fact, it will likely cost Fauquier taxpayers $25 million to $30 million before all of the public safety frequency issues are decided and multiple system changes made. The supervisors knew the technical and cost risks associated with this project before they awarded the contract. Their eagerness to proceed was more a function of giving the sheriff the system he wanted than a concern for good communication at a reasonable cost. The contract with Motorola calls for the system to be operational in August 2003 — two months before the coming election, In fact, on Election Day 2003, the 800MHz system literally will not even be off the ground.

When the next Board of Supervisors convenes in January 2004, I believe one of their first priorities should be to conduct an assessment of the 800MHz project. If it appears that the county faces millions more in costs, serious technical/performance risks, and additional delay in fielding an operational system, they should move to cancel the contract with Motorola. It is better to write off “sunk costs” in a system that will likely work poorly here, than to keep pouring millions of dollars down the 800MHz sink hole. The county still has licenses for the 150MHz frequencies needed to field a first-rate 150MHz system, and have it up and running in less than a year.

Hopefully, the new board will make a decision based on practical merit and not on dubious political motivation.

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