City Questions Management of Regional Radio Plan

After weeks of questions and skepticism about a plan to create a regional radio system for the Bay Area region that includes San Jose (Calif.), city council members agreed with a staff recommendation not to participate in the plan, and went further by alleging the plan’s funding and management decisions were being made without input from participants. A city staff report outlined a convoluted combination of groups and agencies—all with acronyms—organized to link over 100 local public safety radio systems. Each of the radio groups has a governance structure with participants from several large counties and cities, including San Jose. But the staff found that $2 million grants to San Jose and two other cities had been diverted by Alameda County sheriff Gregory Ahern from a data communications project to other radio interoperability uses. The staff also determined that a Request for Information to build a 700 MHz data network, “was not opened to the broader telecommunications and wireless industry, nor was it posted online per City and County of San Francisco procurement guidelines.” Ahern was appointed to be “executive sponsor” of the radio group, but without any vote or input from the group’s participants, the report stated. The staff said a grant award process to award Motorola $50.5 million was “inadequate and questionable.” They also said the sole-source equipment means that future cost control will be “very limited.” San Jose mayor Chuck Reed has sent Ahern a letter with seven Freedom of Information Act requests, asking him to provide correspondence related to the funding and management decisions, who was consulted and how the decisions were justified. Download (pdf) the full staff report, and watch a video explaining the BayWeb project.