Sheriff: Statewide radio network could save county hundreds of thousands of dollars

Gonzales County Sheriff Keith Schmidt told commissioners at their regular Monday, Oct. 28, meeting that a partnership with the Greater Austin Travis Regional Radio System (GATRRS) could save the county as much as $100,000 per year in radio subscription fees and other costs.

Schmidt brought representatives from GATRRS and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to make a presentation to the court on the same day the governing body was to consider the lone bid they received from the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) for new emergency communications radio towers.

However, commissioners ended up tabling any action on developing a Multi-Use Agreement with GATRRS for the time being after more than an hour and a half of discussion about the proposal.

Before the discussion started in earnest, Precinct 2 Commissioner Donnie Brzozowski questioned County Attorney Paul Watkins if it was legal for the court to discuss GATRRS if the county was “already in the bid process” with LCRA.
“Whether you can bid out on it or whatever is a different deal, but if it is listed on the agenda, then you can talk about it,” Watkins said.

TxDOT Statewide Emergency Management Coordinator Matthew Heinze and TxDOT Statewide Radio Coordinator Gordon Harkey then addressed how GATRRS works and the benefits Gonzales County would see if it joined.

Heinze said partners in GATRRS include Texas DPS; Texas Department of Emergency Management; Texas Parks and Wildlife; Texas Wide Area Radio Network (TxWARN) in the Houston area; Western Regions Regional Radio Systems, which covers the Hill Country; Middle Rio Grande Development Council Radio System (MRGDC); South Texas Development Council (STDC); Permian Basin Radio System; and East Texas COG.

“Our goal is to build out a statewide radio network that can be utilized by everybody in it. If people want to join it, they can join it, but if you don't want to join it, that's fine, too,” Heinze said. “The beauty of trunking is when all of these are connected, you can utilize all these systems, so if you go into another area, mutual aid comes in, you're able to use that while still on your basically home channels, so to speak.”

Heinze said with GATRRS, the county would have complete coverage throughout the county using mobile units inside vehicles and “pretty good” coverage in the outside, surrounding areas, just based on existing and proposed towers within Gonzales County.

He said coverage with handhelds would be at about 95 percent of the county, but the areas that are not covered by current or proposed Gonzales County towers could be picked up by a tower that overlaps from a neighboring county, like ones in Karnes County, which has just joined GATRRS, or Lavaca County, which is part of TxWARN.

If Gonzales County seeks GATRRS members, Heinze said the county would be asked to continue to maintain any consoles or towers they currently own or lease as well as any equipment at those sites, but added TxDOT and GATRRS could assist with equipment upgrades when needed. The county would also be responsible for its own generators at those tower sites. If future towers are needed, the county would work with TxDOT and GATRRS to get those built, so the county wouldn’t have to bear that burden alone.

He also said the each first responder agency in the county would be responsible for purchasing its own radios, portables and consoles, but GATRRS does provide the connectivity.

The county would have to pay a one-time programming and subscriber ID management fee for each handheld or mobile unit they own. As additional units are put on the system or units are replaced, they would also have to be programmed for a one-time fee. GATRRS would also require access to any towers, radio shelters, generators or site facilities and use of the current tower site radio equipment.

In exchange, Gonzales County would have access to the Statewide Interoperable System, or SWIC, which means the county can apply for grant funding in compliance with SWIC that would have a higher likelihood of being approved due to their affiliation with SWIC.

TxDOT would also help fund maintenance and support of the Gonzales County radio system through site software and hardware upgrades; backhaul connectivity, including system upgrade agreements (SUA) with Motorola and laying new fiber optic cable when necessary; and TxDOT will cover the master core connection fees and partner subscription fees as a benefit of partnering through GATRRS, which could save the county hundreds of thousands of dollars each year.

If the county wishes to join GATRRS, they would be required to sign a minimum seven-year Multi-Use Agreement with TxDOT, Heinze said.

“We're probably not going to get into the situation where we’re saying we don’t want to handle this anymore, just because of our involvement with emergency response,” Heinze said. “We've got Interstate 10, which is a major corridor for evacuation as well as what is going on in just day-to-day traffic, so I don't ever see us getting out of the radio business.”

Harkey added that TxDOT is also working with DPS’s new system called Texas Interoperable Radio Interconnect System, or TIRIS, and “cross connecting various talk crews across these systems to make them totally interoperable.”

Heinze said TxDOT and GATRRS “want to see what benefits the county and benefits that state system” and would partner with Gonzales County to improve the system.

“Let's see if there's some right of way it would benefit to have a tower site on,” Heinze said. “Let's bring in our other partners to see if they want to fund the tower. Maybe through grant funding through the SWIC to help pay for equipment on those tower sites. It's a partnership.”

Brzozowski said his biggest concern is radio coverage in both the southern part of the county as well as in Waelder, which is in his precinct.

“You know, we had some problems down there with radio coverage,” Brzozowski said. “The reason I ask so many questions, is we got a system now that’s been changed and it's been working good and we haven’t had any complaints. I mean, southern end of the county has been good and up in Waelder has been good. You got something that's good, if you're going to jump off in something else, you sure want to be as good or better than what you got.”

La Fleur echoed that sentiment, stating he has family in Nixon where handheld coverage can be susceptible. Harkey said the addition of radio towers in both Karnes County and a possible new tower in Floresville would help with that, as will the Smart Connect feature, where the radio unit has the capability to determine if it is best to connect communications through radio frequency or a LTE cell signal instead and it will choose the better option.

Harkey demonstrated his own radio and performed a radio check for commissioners and got back a response from someone in Beaumont as well as someone at I-10 and Toll Road 130 in Guadalupe County near Seguin.

“What I have in my hand is a connection that the talk group is enabled on Smart Connect, and the talk group is called TxDOT statewide event five. Anyone who is on that talk group connected to GATRRS — whether it's this kind of radio or not — if they're within range of the system and they're on TxDOT event five, they will copy that traffic and can talk back to me,” Harkey said.

“If there's a cell tower within reach, a Wi Fi system within reach, that radio will affiliate onto the system,” Harkey added. “We talked to a guy in our system who was at the airport in Chicago and we called him up on a meeting when we were in Brown County Thursday.”

County Judge Pat Davis, a former state trooper, said the Smart Connect feature especially can be helpful for officers on pursuits who may find themselves on a “foot pursuit in the middle of a pasture.”

“They can have their exact location show up and you could actually send a helicopter or whatever you wanted straight to that location,” Davis said.

Brzozowski asked Heinze why GATRRS and TxDOT didn’t bid on the tower project.

“We're a state agency,” Heinze said. “We're not for profit, so we wouldn't be part of the bidding process. We're more of a partnership.”

“This is a conglomeration of legislatively funded agencies that are moving forward with a plan the statewide interoperability concept has been around for quite a few years,” Harkey said. “Now it's taken on some momentum, and it's moving forward.”

Schimdt praised LCRA’s relationship in working with Gonzales County but said he asked Heinze and Harkey to speak to commissioners once he learned about GATRRS because “I personally did not know that that a solution existed.”

“Obviously, in my opinion, GATRRS and LCRA are pretty similar in that they have a core, they have a nice regional system that gives us something that we can't get if we just built something in Gonzales County,” Schmidt said. “The big thing to me when we visited with them was with them coming in and handling the maintenance and the upgrades for us.

“Today, we've got about 400 radios in the county, and we're spending about $100,000 a year on fees, and where TxDOT would help with that fee and with picking up the maintenance on the ongoing expense. That's how I see the difference.

“We need a system that just doesn't work in Gonzales County. Our deputies go out of Gonzales County a fair amount so we e need to be able to talk outside of Gonzales,” Schmidt added. “I think that the GATRRS system will work. The difference maker, to me, is bringing in TxDOT, who's trying to do something where we share this burden and they help us with the cost.”

Gonzales City Manager Tim Crow said when he looked at GATRRS “from a fiscal impact to our budget, if it doesn't have the subscription fees per radio, it just it makes a whole lot of sense for us fiscally not to have to pay those fees.”

Belmont Fire Chief Brian Schauer said he also agrees with Crow.

“The (current) LCRA system is working for us, but I do have some dead spots with handhelds in that area right now. Of course, the towers get built, maybe those would go away, but I think it boils down to, if you're going to save $100,000 for the county, why not do that?” Schauer asked.

Nixon Police Chief Miguel Cantu said his agency has good radio reception right now as they can pick up towers in Guadalupe and Wilson counties in addition to the Gonzales tower.

“We don't have any complaints, but I see the benefit of going statewide,” Cantu said. “That makes a lot of sense.”

Gonzales County ESD No. 1 executive director Eddie Callendar also said he sees the benefit of a statewide network.

“I think statewide is where we're going, and it's a matter of if we're going to be on the front end of it or are we going to be dragging up late in the game a few years from now?” Callendar said.

Incoming Precinct 1 Commissioner Anton “Tony” Matias, who both works for the county on a road crew currently and is a part of the EMS, said GATRRS sounds like “a move to the future.
“It sounds like a good deal and it looks like you're going to save the county, you know, $100,000 and then it can be funded by the government, so that’s going to go a long way,” Matias said.

Davis said he appreciated Schmidt taking the initiative to get other first responders’ input and see what they also thought would be best and would be beneficial to the county.

Commissioners decided to table the matter until a later date so they could further discuss the proposal and look at the MUA they would have to approve, if they choose to go with GATRRS. They also wanted to wait for current Precinct 1 Commissioner K.O. “Dell” Whiddon to be present so he could hear more about the system as well.