This commentary is by Stephen Whitaker of Montpelier, an author who has worked for 30 years on integrating planning, government transparency and accountability, public records access and more recently utility networks resiliency.
We should all take some time to appreciate that in Vermont we don’t have dozens of people drowning in a desperate, overcrowded raft accident, crossing the English Channel to safety. Or adults and children burning to death in a bus crash returning from Hajj, as in Bulgaria. Or maliciously mowed down at a holiday parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
Our public safety may often be taken for granted in Vermont. But it’s important to recognize the very real need for substantial investments in, and ongoing maintenance of, our public safety infrastructure. These investments are essential to assure that not only can we call for help when we or a loved one needs it, but that those responding will have reliable communications service everywhere necessary to deliver that assistance.
Today, to respond to those in emergency situations, central Vermont relies on a 30-year-old analog radio system with just six towers. It was built with a few hundred thousand dollars of FEMA grant funds that were earmarked by Sen. Leahy in the early ’90s. An adequate system today might require twice that number of towers carefully located around the region, as well as a number of small cells mounted on utility poles for cellular in-fill.
That radio system is due for replacement, though it’s not failing just yet. What’s most important now is for all stakeholders to engage in informed municipal and regional discussions. Now is the time for the selectboards of all the towns in central Vermont to recognize that public safety communications is not a world unto its own esoteric science, nor is it the sole responsibility or prerogative of our mostly volunteer fire departments; nor is broadband the exclusive domain of Comcast, Charter or CVFiber.
Likewise, ubiquitous 4G/LTE cell service from all three major carriers will not happen in rural areas absent coordinated planning, finance and involvement by government, as it’s simply not profitable. We can now take effective measures to improve all of these.
These communications infrastructure investments are vital, just as our roads, sidewalks, water, sewer and broadband are. And the price is likewise going to be in the millions of dollars. The real questions center on strategies for avoiding waste, assuring cost-effective efficiency of integrated planning, designing good governance, fairly allocating costs and agreeing on the speed of each deployment.
Planning these systems together should be done now, not a year from now, as these are each complex systems that will need to be expertly planned, engineered, specified, bid, constructed and tested. They will also need to be interoperable, with other systems serving as backup for possible, even probable, disaster scenarios like ice storms, hurricanes and floods, all resulting in extended power outages.
Right now there’s abundant funding coming from Washington, most with an emphasis on broadband to support distance education, telehealth and remote work. Wireless broadband, just like public safety radios, requires carefully sited towers and fiber backhaul to connect those radios with antennas and, as a best practice, generators or large batteries to keep systems up during power outages. And all of these systems also require expert routine maintenance.
The next generation of public safety communications relies on digital broadband, as cellphones do. Wireless broadband is not a replacement for, but an adjunct to the land mobile radios now used for talking among first responders and dispatchers. Broadband, unlike those radios, enables vehicle location tracking, automated route mapping, body-camera video transmission and storage, locating which floor a downed firefighter is on, aerial drone video fireground surveys, pre-arrival hospital monitoring of a injured or pregnant patient (i.e., EKG or sonogram) while the ambulance is still on the road.
Though currently not used by all of our fire, police and ambulance services, the biggest bang for the buck will come from integrating the planning for fixed wireless broadband, mobile wireless (cellular) in-fill of chronic dead zones, and public safety radio communications to enhance emergency response. Such an integrated strategy can also serve as a demonstration project of “best practices,” able to leverage the greatest share of federal funding and state grants by emphasizing the economy of shared facilities, fail-over/resiliency planning, and the buy-in of local, state and federal cost-sharing.
Presently, we have one aged radio system being hurriedly pursued for replacement by Capital Fire Mutual Aid System with shaky finances and equally rickety governance. That group has absolutely no interest in mobile wireless cellular or fixed wireless, nor even broadband to support public safety. And somebody please tell me: What good are the best emergency response apparatus and most modern equipped response vehicles if the person in need of help cannot get a cell signal sufficient to be able to make that urgent call for help?
Another initiative, CVFiber, more than three and a half years in, is still aiming to build out fiber over the next three or four years. It plans to do this using public funds, yet has no interest in supporting competition (as required by statute) necessary to bring prices down to an affordable range, nor in deploying fixed wireless in the meantime, which could provide broadband to most of the unserved addresses for those not willing or able to wait three or four more years, even for unaffordable internet access.
Similarly, savings or cost efficiencies can be gained by cooperating with other users, designing around the needs of the Central Vermont hospital and transit system radio antennas. Both CVMC and Green Mountain Transit lose contact with their vehicles in many dead zones. In the same way, public safety vehicles and even municipal public works trucks and snowplows take risks under the current deficient systems coverage.
The state of Vermont is also now expressing the need for more expert call takers at locations where the emergency 911 calls are answered. Berlin, East Montpelier, Northfield, Moretown, Waitsfield and Waterbury should all consider joining the Central Vermont Public Safety Authority and sharing in the design and engineering costs of a new integrated system that will bring multiple benefits to all parties.
Similarly, Barre City and Barre Town are considering their own million-dollar investments for upgrading radios, consoles and new towers for public safety only, but would clearly benefit and save money by sharing a regional system. Yet there are still large numbers of folks in Barre Town and surrounding areas who still have no access to broadband and could be served sooner by an integrated radio design approach, able to immediately take advantage of targeted federal broadband funding to replace or harden radio towers, build fiber connectivity to those towers and to install backup generators.
Sharing one set of well designed communications systems among many communities is clearly the most cost-effective approach to these large investments. This simply requires vision, shared planning, engineering, maintenance and good governance. None of these towns can really afford to do without these services or to “go it alone.”
St. Johnsbury and its newly planned public safety dispatch facility is on a similar trajectory of expanding a consolidated dispatch servics for surrounding towns. Ideally, it might conduct and coordinate this planning alongside central Vermont, so that either location could rely on the other as its fail-over location. Fail-over is the term used for a facility can accommodate not only its own emergency communications traffic, but all of the traffic from the fail-over site as well, such that if Montpelier were to fail — lose power, be flooded, or worse, St. Johnsbury’s facility could instantly handle the full emergency dispatch traffic for both. Or vice versa.
This type of planning for ‘communications interoperability’ requires all parties to be at the design table, setting aside old grudges and turfs and single-purpose technology focus. This is also what Vermonters deserve.
The abundant available funds at this time are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only build the best communications systems, state-of-the-art, for public safety radio and broadband, mobile wireless cellular and fixed wireless broadband, and interconnecting fiber, but to do so in the most cost-effective manner, sharing the planning, design and engineering costs among all systems and all our communities while leveraging maximum federal funds.
The governance for this type of project is the immediate challenge and cannot be done in a vacuum among towns indifferent or antagonistic with each other, waiting it out or sitting it out. Nor should it be left to firemen who, with rare exception, are only concerned with one small slice of the technology puzzle. The municipal selectboards should immediately become engaged, informed, and participate in governance at this crucial time.
In summary, now is the time for all of the towns and cities in Washington County to step up, to join in the integrated planning for what is certain to be a multimillion-dollar investment, with ongoing maintenance and upgrades to increase not only public safety, but cellular broadband, fixed wireless and storm resiliency.
And the big question is: Do we do this in a smart, integrated fashion and get the most value for the dollars expended? Or do we do it piecemeal, haphazardly and again waste significant time and vast sums of money, and still not have a state-of-the-art system to educate and inform our citizens, as well as protect our citizens, visitors and first responders?
We should again remember to appreciate the relative safety that we enjoy yet not be complacent, nor fail to get ready for the coming storms for which we are not at all prepared.
Edited for length.
