Finance Committee - 10/18/2017 Page 5
Mr. Mansfield
| would like to thank the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen for funding this this year. | know it was an issue
because of the budget, although I’m very passionate about this. | think that this is one of the biggest things
that we need to continue to do to maintain our communications within the city.
The first piece of this is the Motorola system upgrade agreement. This is the $191,960.77. This is the first
payment of two payments which will allow us to upgrade our system every two years. This first phase,
$191,000, will basically be paid to Motorola after FY2018 when we go into 2019 if this is funded again. The fee
would be $193,963.79. After that point, we could schedule our first upgrade to the radio system. Currently we
are ina 7.15 radio system. We would be looking to move up to a 7.17 radio system.
What this maintenance contract includes is all software and hardware that is required to upgrade the system.
If the server needs to be replaced because the software has changed, they are going to replace the server. It
basically deals with infrastructure and the dispatch centers within the city. It does not deal with portable or
mobile radios. It is strictly infrastructure that we are talking about with this upgrade.
We in the communications division upgrade the portables and mobiles on a routine basis. We try to do it
annually. It takes a lot of time to do that because we have to actually physically touch each radio. That is
something that we do. That is software that is free. That keeps us up-to-date so when this does come in we
will be ready to go for any changes that we are going to make to the system. As | said, this does include all
hardware and software within the system. | did include in the back of the first section a list which specifies all
the software and hardware that’s going to be changed and the system when we move to the upgrade.
Mayor Donchess
| think it is right after the section that’s 1 of 9, 2 of 9, through 7 or 9. It’s right after that, | believe. It’s under the
service agreement, so-called.
Mr. Mansfield
Thank you, Mayor. There’s two pages here of software and hardware that will end up being changed out if it
does come to fruition next year. | asked Motorola to give us a six-year plan to continue the upgrades. On the
memo that | sent the Mayor, which | believe you all have on the front page it explains how much it would cost
from 2017 through 2022. That would allow for three system upgrades. We would be doing a 7.17 upgrade, a
7.19 upgrade and a planned 7.21 upgrade once the 2022 payment is made.
Alderman Siegel
Mr. Mansfield, when we talked about this way back when when we decided we to put this money aside, you
had sort of indicated that the system was pretty much spiting chewing gum to maintain and that we really
needed to upgrade the system to be compatible.
Mr. Mansfield
With the old system to the current system that we have today, yes. The reason why that occurred where we
were putting band aids and duct tape around it was because of the fact that we did not continue with upgrades
throughout the years. After 14 years of a system being out there, we couldn’t find parts. None of the parts that
we had were repairable. We were doing searches throughout the country to find the parts and pieces to keep
the system running. That’s the main reason why, especially now with this new system. It’s a lot more
software. It’s IT based. It’s a lot of servers, software. Everything in it needs to be kept up-to-date because of
not only what Motorola is doing, but Motorola is also trying to keep up with the industry, such as Microsoft.
They use Microsoft products. They use different types of security software. All of these things are updated at
the same time as well as us being allowed to possibly get new features when the system comes in.
