RACOM meets with supervisors about communications contract

MARENGO — Mike Miller, president of RACOM, answered questions for Iowa County Supervisors as a maintenance contract with the communications provider is set to expire.

The maintenance agreement extends the manufacturer’s warranty on equipment and covers annual preventive maintenance for about $300,000 a year, Miller said.

Cellphone companies take care of communication up to the 911 call, said Miller, but RACOM takes care of all the communications after that, such as dispatch equipment, towers, in-car radios and handheld radios.

Iowa County’s contract with RACOM went into effect in 2017, said Miller. It runs through 2027.

Five P25 tower sites provide “great coverage” to nearly 600 radios, said Miller. Almost all of Iowa County’s neighbors, such as Poweshiek and Linn Counties “use the same radio system for their communications,” Miller said. That allows seamless transition when officers enter different counties for incidents, such as a chase on Interstate-80.

“That inter-operability … also extends to state patrol,” said Miller, though State Patrol is on a different system — ISCS — rather than Shared Area Radio Agreement, which is used by Iowa County.

RACOM’s maintenance contract with Iowa County doesn’t cover obsolete equipment, said Miller, “and that’s where your current system is today.”

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Many of the radios are at the end of life according to the manufacturer, so the manufacturer no longer makes components. That means RACOM can’t fix them.

Communications systems are really expensive, said Miller. There are two ways to plan for expenses.

The county can wait for things to break and then fix them. Those costs are unknown.

Or the county can plan for phasing out and updating equipment — costs that are known and planned.

This plan is the same that Linn and Johnson Counties have, said Miller. They replace equipment at staged intervals so the equipment doesn’t get old and break.

The contract that Iowa County Emergency Management Agency wants with RACOM locks in pricing now for infrastructure replacement over a potentially escalating future, said Miller. For one annual fee, RACOM will replace all major subsystems systematically through the 10 years of the contract.

Iowa County Supervisor Abigail Maas wondered if the county could find other options that would save tax dollars. She asked about prices of different radio brands, how many radios a county the size of Iowa County actually needs and whether Iowa County could merge its contract with another county to get a lower rater.

Miller said the company can look into radio brands other than the Harris radios the county currently uses, but it won’t “move the needle a lot,” said Miller.

“We reduced a lot of the features we don’t need,” said EMA Director Josh Humphrey, and EMA has reduced the number of radios it’s using.

Not all of the county’s radios are at end of life, said Humphrey. Some law enforcement radios will be passed on to the fire departments. The fire radios are at end of life, he said.

Humphrey said the county gets Harris radios at a good price. “We get some discounts from Harris because we have Harris infrastructure,” he said.

If the county buys different radios, it would have to get a different maintenance contract. “It’s good to keep it with one company if at all possible,” Humphrey said.

Iowa County doesn’t have a core for the radio system, said Miller. It shares Linn County’s core. Linn County gets some coverage from Iowa County, so it’s willing to do that, Miller said.

If Iowa County didn’t use this system, it would have to buy a core, said Miller.

The radios Iowa County has today were $1,200 to $3,000 each when they were purchased 10 years ago, said Humphrey.

Today those radios cost $2,000 to $5,000, said RACOM’s Duane Vos.

EMA plans to replace radios for the fire department, quick response, police, emergency medical services, emergency management and weather spotters, Humphrey said.

As far as combining contracts with other counties, it’s probably not possible, Miller said.

“Everyone’s on a different life cycle,” said Humphrey. “All these counties came on at different times.”

Supervisor Jon Degen said the public will ask why the county has to change its communications system.

One reason is cybersecurity, said Miller. The county needs to make sure it has the most up-to-date security. Companies issue patches for a few years, said Miller, but eventually a product is declared obsolete, and users have to get new hardware.

That leads to the second reason. RACOM can’t get parts to repair equipment that are obsolete.

Even cellphones won’t update when they get too old, said Supervisor Kevin Heitshusen.

Humphrey said a microwave card went out at a tower site recently and had to be replaced. That’s $10,000 that was already in the maintenance contract, he said. Without the contract, the county would have had to come up with that money.

This contract RACOM is offering is for 10 years for the radios and 15 years for the infrastructure, Humphrey said. He won’t have unforeseen communications expenses if the county has a contract with RACOM because the contract covers those expenses, he said.

Humphrey said the county needs to decide what it wants to do by October because replacing everything takes time.