October 4, 2010

“While the men arrayed behind me can go down into the weeds about the technology of the D Block, let me talk to you about some very simple words that caused me great concern in the presentation this morning:

“Admiral Barnett of the FCC used the phrase that “local first responders would be allowed to negotiate priority system overrides with appropriate compensation.” Now I'm sure they're concerned with the “allowed to negotiate” and I can tell you as someone who has to balance a local budget the “for appropriate compensation” really causes me concern because as always while the promise may be that these issues will be addressed at the federal level, I never want my first responders put in the position of having to decide can I do this, should I override the commercial communications system in order to respond to an emergency, maybe I don't have the money, and who's going to make that call? This is something that has to be addressed on the national level.

“I would also say that as a city that's in process of migrating our radio system so that we can achieve interoperability with our county because my 2.2 million people can't communicate with another three million represented in the county – they could be across the street from one another. We have to have a national bill that allows interoperability across this country so we don't have this fractured patchwork with all of the burden on the local areas.”