Subject: [NEXTEL-1] LITTLE ROCK - As, Huckabee announces new $27 million first responder system

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 15:22:10 -0400

Huckabee announces new $27 million first responder system
Thursday, May 6, 2004

By Wesley Brown
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK - As U.S. homeland security officials become more concerned
about terrorist strikes inside U.S. borders, Gov. Mike Huckabee
announced Wednesday that the state is developing a multimillion dollar
wireless communication system to help emergency officials better
communicate with each other.

"This is our greatest need when it comes to emergency response,"
Huckabee, in a statement, said of the $27 million Arkansas Wireless
Information System.

The governor said the new voice and data communications network, which
will be integrated into the current system now owned by the Arkansas
State Police, will greatly improved communications during emergency
situations.

Huckabee said local and state emergency service personnel now use more
than 200 radio systems, most of which can't communicate with each other.

"We must find a way for local, state and federal emergency service
providers to communicate securely and efficiently on the same network,"
Huckabee said, adding that some emergency response exercises have ended
"in chaos" because various agencies could not talk with other.

"That has created problems during past disasters such as the March 1997
(and) January 1999, the December 2000 ice storms," Huckabee said.

To pay for the multiyear project, Huckabee said the state will issue
revenue bonds, use part of its homeland security grants from the federal
government, and use funds from the Law Enforcement Terrorism Prevention
Program.

The governor said that the Arkansas Development Finance Authority will
issue revenue bonds on behalf of the state police and the proceeds from
the offering will be used to finance the acquisition and installation of
new equipment.

The debt service on the bonds will be paid from $3 million in yearly
revenues received from driver's license fees that were formerly pledged
for work on the Arkansas State Police headquarters and the existing
communications system.

Over the past year, Arkansas has been bulking up its emergency response
efforts largely with federal funding from the newly created Homeland
Security Department, headed by former Virginia governor Tom Ridge and
former Arkansas congressman Asa Hutchinson, who serves as undersecretary
of the mammoth agency.

In September, Arkansas received more than $15 million in federal funds
from the department the time, Hutchinson said that after the Sept. 11
attacks, the U.S. two homeland security priorities included getting
first responders nationwide to effectively communicate with each other
and making sure that the nation and all 50 states could manage separate
terrorist incidents and natural disasters.

"We saw in New York City at the World Trade Center - firefighters who
could not communicate with police, and police who could not communicate
with health care workers," the former Arkansas lawmaker said.

In December, Huckabee and state homeland security officials announced
that a portion of the federal funds would be used to build a
state-of-the-art emergency operations bunker at Camp Robinson in North
Little Rock. It will replace a 1960's era underground facility in
Conway, which Huckabee said then had outlived its usefulness.

The state's new homeland security chief, Col. Wayne Ruthven, said the
planned 30,000-square-foot, three-story facility will take two to three
years to build.

Huckabee said that three counties, Miller, Craighead and Lonoke, have
been chosen to participate in an initial pilot program before the
multiyear project is implemented statewide in the other 72 counties.

"This effort will have several phases and be implemented during a period
of years," he said. "But we must start now."

http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2004/05/06/News/197868.html

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