Title
Fire Station Alerting System Replacement Update (B)
This item requests that the City Commission authorize the Mayor to send a letter to the Chair of the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners supporting the County’s participation in the Fire Station Alerting Project.
Explanation
At the May 12th, 2016 meeting of the City’s General Policy Committee, the staff recommendation for the City Commission to invite Alachua County to join the Fire Station Alerting project at substantial initial savings to the County and to jointly fund the system thereafter was supported.
The City Commission has approved expenditures of $488,160 on a base Fire Station Alerting system. Previous grant requests and capital improvement study anticipated a single system to be shared by Gainesville Fire Rescue (GFR) and Alachua County Fire Rescue (ACFR). The grant requests were for substantially higher amounts for more capable systems; however, the project is now a scaled-down first phase design. This base-system includes the minimum equipment (re- using most existing GFR Fire Station equipment), first-year software license, and warranties with remote support.
There is an opportunity for ACFR to connect to this base-system purchased by the City. There would still be costs for the County to buy equipment for each Fire Station brought online with the new system.
Not taking advantage of a single or compatible Fire Station Alerting System will, over time, result in increasing failure of the County’s older system and station components until the platform is unsustainable with limited support options. The lack of compatibility with ACFR and Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) will prevent efficiencies and interoperability gains that reduce emergency response time for County units (including ambulances) responding to City incidents.
History/Background Information
The Fire Station Alerting System is used to notify first responders of calls for service. A dispatcher at the Combined Com...
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