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Editorial: Cedar Co. should lead on radios
Op-Ed · July 23, 2015
We hope that when both the City of West Branch and Cedar County Board of Supervisors meet to discuss radio communications between the two entities, neither should consider it “West Branch’s problem.” It is also not “Cedar County’s problem.”
From conversations around the table at the E911 meetings in April and July, there are some who view this as “our problem,” and we think they are correct.
At issue is the effort to move from analog to digital radio communications. Most of the equipment is in place at the county and other cities, and West Branch needs to update their handheld and car radios. The key problem, as we see it, is the repeater system — the communications equipment that picks up radio signals that originate in the low-lying sections of southwest Cedar County and shoots them over to Tipton-based dispatchers and back.
Here are important things to consider when figuring out how much Cedar County should pay and how much West Branch should pay toward a repeater:
• Cedar County Sheriff’s Department is responsible for providing law enforcement for the entire county. That includes the rural areas and cities. Cedar County deputies, for example, responded to West Branch Village to assist West Branch Police when a boy pulled what was later determined to be a pellet gun on a teenage girl. The boy was transported to the Sheriff’s office by deputies, too. If, for whatever reason, the WBPD no longer existed, yet the residents remained, Cedar County would continue to be responsible for law enforcement and public safety in the West Branch area and their deputies would need clear radio communications with dispatch.
• The low-lying, southwest corner of Cedar County is an area much larger than West Branch.
• Almost half of the stretch of I-80 running through Cedar County is in the low-lying southwest corner, and I-80 is the most dangerous road in the county in all kinds of weather, at all times of the year.
• Law enforcement agencies operating within southwest Cedar County are, primarily, the National Park Service (Hoover Historic Site), Iowa State Patrol, Cedar County Sheriff and West Branch Police. All four of these agencies will benefit from the repeater.
• Consider how utilities operate. For example, a water utility maintains all of the pumps, towers, piping and more throughout its service area, while the customer is responsible for pipes and fixtures inside their home or business all the way out to the property line. It makes sense for the county to approach radio communications with the cities in the same way.
• West Branch directly boosts law enforcement coverage to its own city and indirectly boosts law enforcement to the remainder of the county because the sheriff does not need to patrol the West Branch area as much and can spend more time patrolling rural areas.
• As a practice, West Branch Police assist sheriff deputies and state patrol officers outside of city limits, especially when they are the closest law enforcement agencies in times of an emergency. West Branch will often arrive on a scene and provide much-needed assistance before other law enforcement can respond. This includes incidents and accidents on Interstate 80. No doubt many motorists are quite thankful for this.
• West Branch is the only city in the county with an interstate running through it. As was mentioned at the E911 board, traffic on I-80 includes trucks carrying nuclear waste and volatile chemicals.
We know that a repeater will not provide all of the communications needs for West Branch, as part of the city lies within Johnson County. West Branch needs a simulcast system that allows officers to communicate with dispatchers in Iowa City. Johnson County also uses digital communications, but they operate on a different frequency, thus necessitating a simulcast system — one that transmits a single radio call over two frequencies, so that both counties can hear West Branch police at once.
It is appropriate for Cedar County to take the lead on finding the repeater system to communicate with the southwest corner of its jurisdiction, and to serve as the main entity dealing with vendors, bidding the project, overseeing installation, paying for the work and ongoing maintenance and repairs. It is also fair for the county to ask West Branch to contribute a significant portion of the funding since West Branch would use the repeater more than other law enforcement agencies on a day-to-day basis to serve the second-largest city in the county.
Neither the city nor the county should pay for all of the work, and West Branch need not take the lead in the project, though it could if the repeater should end up on city property.
West Branch already spent thousands of dollars conducting a study of what digital radio systems would best replace the existing analog system. That information should be shared with the Cedar County Board of Supervisors and we would encourage both entities, as they have done for decades, to work together to maintain a good communications system that sufficiently supports law enforcement and public safety in the southwest area.
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