It appears that someone somewhere decided to look for the cause of the degradation of the City of Portsmouth 800 Mhz Trunked Radio System and they might have found it. From what I have been able to learn the City has done some work on the antenna’s at the main radio site. It appears to have had significant improvements in the operation of the system especially in the Churchland area. I can attest to it first hand. I am actually impressed, their are still some issues but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Hats off to whoever decided to do some troubleshooting before the city went forward with a multi-million dollar simulcast site in Churchland. I understand the city’s financial issues and as someone who has a contract on a house in Portsmouth and a future resident I don’t want the City of Portsmouth to needlessly waste money. Especially money they don’t have. I think improvements in the operation of the main site are a great step forward but the coverage from the backup site at the Jail also need to be addressed. If the main site goes down because of equipment failure or for maintenance the backup site will be put into service. I have significant concerns with the current radio architecture.

The City of Portsmouth really needs a “Radio System Engineer” to management and address these types of problems. Someone who is an expert in radio telecommunications and system architectures. Currently the radio system is managed by a computer professional. I don’t know if he has any radio telecommunications background or not. He is an IT (Information Technology) professional and I suspect he has no radio background. A computer professional (IT specialist) might be the best IT specialist on the planet but radio systems and computer systems have computers in common but if you have no background in radio telecommunications you are not going to be able to effectively manage a radio telecommunications system. Especially one as complex as a city wide Motorola 800Mhz Trunked Radio system. It took Virginia Beach a number of years to realize this fact and they now have a Radio Engineer dedicated to managing there 800Mhz Motorola Smartnet Simulcast Trunked Radio System.

A step in the right direction. Lets keep it up ..

I received a comment back in January that I have not had time to address until now. Below is the comment and my response;

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First, I never went begging or groveling for my job back. In fact Chief Corvello offered it back to me prior to the Grievance Panel Hearing but I turned him down because I would have had to take punishment for something I didn’t do. That was something I will never be willing to accept.

Second, I stopped writing for a number of reasons. As I said I won my grievance with the City of Portsmouth and was reinstated to my previous position as a Police Officer. That job keeps me very very busy so my time is much more limited then before.  As an employee of the City of Portsmouth I have certain obligations as an employee that I feel I must follow in my blog postings that I did not have when I was not an employee. If you read my goals when I started this blog you will see that many of my goals have been achieved or are being addressed;

1) Got my job back, received $20,000 in backpay and all my benefits.

2) City Council passed the resolution granting a Public Safety pay plan and finally making Public Safety pay “market based” and comparable to the other Police Departments in the area. The city is hoping to stem the flow of Portsmouth Police Officers leaving for better paying jobs in other departments. Their are issues with the Pay Plan and a copy of the report produced by the consultant “Matrix Consulting Group” is available by clicking here. The city will not answer questions about the plan and refer inqueries to Officer Jim Swann who is the President of the local Portsmouth FOP (Fraternal Order of Police) Lodge. Anyone see a problem with that? He is not in HR or in payroll and the city has no business referring any employee to him regarding their pay. Given the current financial situation I do not believe the city will follow through with this long overdue promise and institute the plan in July. I fully expect the City Council to backout of the deal claiming they don’t have the money because of the “economic crisis” not that I thought they could/would come up with the money to fund this before the crisis. I also have heard rumors that the city is saying that the Pay Plan is “Time in Grade” based. I disagree after reading the Matrix Report. It clearly states “An employee will move one step for each year of service.” Their is no mention of an employee starting over at Step 0/1 if they are promoted. The notion is ludicrous and senior people being promoted would actually receive pay cuts. More responsibility less pay, don’t see the logic in that…

3) See that better management is put in place in the Portsmouth Police Department. I have already made posts about that in the past. To update everyone that is not already aware, Portsmouth has a new Chief of Police, Edward G. Hargis. Thankfully he is from the “outside” and was not one of the people that applied from within. He is already making changes and from what I hear holding some of his executive staff far more accountable then the previous Chief. I am hoping that accountability, ethics and professionalism become the words of the day under the new Chief.

4) Radio System problems are being addressed, very slowly but plans call for a multi-million dollar Motorola Smartnet Simulcast site in Churchland to address the considerable problems Public Safety personel having in communicating using the current generation of portable radios. I am looking into additional details because I am now assigned to work Churchland several days a week and find the radio problem to be of serious concern for officer safety. I have used the new car and fixxed base repeaters that have been installed in some of the police cars and at several sites in the Churchland area. I am not impressed overall with the functionallity of the repeaters. They are a step in the right direction but they have significant short comings. Portsmouth needs a simucast site in Churchland to correct the problems and make it safe for all the city employees that rely on the system for communications. I hope and pray that some public safety official does not have to die to have the radio system short comings addressed.

This was my first post in many months and I have a couple other issues that I will be making posts about in the future but with my current constraints I will not be able to maintain the same level of posts as before.