Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Louisville gets grant for radio system Goal is to connect communications for public-safety agencies

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 13:11:31 -0500

Louisville gets grant for radio system  Goal is to connect
communications for public-safety agencies

By SHELDON S. SHAFER
[email-masked]

The Courier-Journal Louisville will receive $8.6 million as a one-time
grant from the federal Department of Homeland Security — money that will
be used to help put all metro public safety workers on the same
wavelength.
The grant brings to more than $32 million the amount set aside toward
the estimated $50 million to $60 million cost to standardize the
communications of metro public-safety departments.

The Louisville and Jefferson County police, which merged in January, use
different communications systems that are incompatible because they
operate on different frequencies.

The local money is part of a $725 million appropriation that Congress
earmarked for about 30 urban areas considered to be at high risk as
terrorist targets, said U.S. Rep. Anne Northup, R-3rd District, who
announced the Louisville grant late yesterday afternoon.

Metro Mayor Jerry Abramson said the goal is to have a complete budget
for the project a year from now, and to have a plan to "interconnect"
all public-safety operations around the end of 2006.

The new unified communications system is expected to include metro
police, metro and suburban district fire departments, emergency medical
services, some Metro Health Department disaster operations and hospital
emergency rooms.

The estimated cost, which has risen several times in the last year,
would include a new consolidated dispatch office.
Previous money allocated to the project includes $8 million from
refinancing a bond issue originally sold to expand Kentucky
International Convention Center; $10 million from a 911 surcharge that
local phone users pay monthly; and $6 million from a U.S. Justice
Department grant announced earlier this year.

Abramson said he hopes to get additional federal money in the coming
year. But he added that metro government may end up having to issue
bonds to cover the lion's share of the remaining money.

The mayor promoted merger yesterday as a reason for Louisville's getting
the latest homeland security grant.
"The fact that we ended up being one of the 30 urban centers that
(received) the money says a lot about the position that merger has put
us in, in terms of our being competitive" for federal aid, Abramson
said.

Abramson credited the entire Kentucky congressional delegation for help
in obtaining the grant, especially Northup and U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers,
R-5th District, who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee's
homeland security subcommittee.

Officials said Secretary Tom Ridge of the Homeland Security Department
had the final say on the grants.
Northup said the money was allotted largely on the basis of a formula
that considered population, urban density and the potential as a
terrorist target. She said some of the factors in the formula are
classified.

But she noted that Louisville has extensive chemical industries, two
Ford Motor Co. plants and a river where terrorists might want "to take
out a bridge."

She said Louisville's multicultural population also was a factor.
"Terrorists might find it easy" to blend in, she said.
Louisville officials had recently said they believe the city had been
shortchanged in homeland security funding, primarily under a state
formula that awarded much of the federal money allocated to Kentucky to
rural areas.

Earlier this year the state got $9 million in homeland security money,
but under the formula Louisville received only $188,000. Most of that
money was earmarked for emergency-preparedness equipment and training.

http://www.courier-journal.com/localnews/2003/11/01ky/wir-front-home1101-1-5474.html

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