The Government Operations and Fiscal Policy (GO) and Public Safety (PS) committees held a joint session on March 11, 2026, from 1:30 p.m. to 2:19 p.m. to review two FY27-32 Capital Improvements Program (CIP) items and Bill 3-26, the County Values Act, which addresses immigration enforcement guidance at county facilities. The committees recommended approval of both CIPs and recommended enactment of Bill 3-26 with several amendments.
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this joint committee session. This is the joint committee of government operations and fiscal policy and public safety. We have three items on our agenda this morning. The first two kind of go together. Um, and we have Dr. Toregas with us and Ms. Farag, and we're going to be discussing capital improvement program. One is the county radio life cycle replacement, and the other is the public safety system monitorization. When we are done with that, we are going to turn to Bill 3-26, which is the immigration enforcement guidance, or better known as the County Values Act. Uh, first, before I turn it over to our team here, I'll see if our my co-chair has anything to add. Nope. No, all right. Ms. Farag, you are up. Good afternoon, everyone. Uh, as you mentioned, this is the recommended FY2732 CIP for general government county radio lifecycle replacement is the first item. Uh, for this, the recommended uh expenditures are about 13 million, and that just reflects four years' worth of replacements. It is an $18 million decrease from the last approved FY25 FY30 CIP, and that's about a 58% reduction. The program provides for the phase replacement of voice radio equipment used primarily by county's first responder agencies, which include police, fire rescue, sheriff, corrections, department of transportation, and the park and planning commission, park police. Uh these radios have reached the end of their expected 10-year service life. They are replacing the radios that have been purchased in 2011. They've reached the end of their service life in 2021, and the executive advises that 1,200 radios are beyond their service life that are still in use as of FY27. There is a replacement scheduled chart on page two for your reference. I also wanted to mention a pilot project in FY25. Uh the council approved 148,000 added to conduct a pilot program to test 20 non-public safety radios from an alternative manufacturer to determine if they meet the county's needs. The pilot tested, they actually tested about 26 other radios and concluded that while other radios do function on the P25 network, they can't use many of the existing system features that public safety staff currently rely on. The radios also were not cheaper than current radios. The pilot advised that they may be appropriate for other non-public safety options in the future. The total project costs for this remain the same at 55.2 million, and council staff's recommending approval as submitted by the executive. Great. Any comments from the executive side of things? No. Chair Gas. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Can we be clear when we're saying that it's that it's gone pay as its uh expected uh life expectancy that that we're still using them, some we're still using for four or five years, PSN. And are they still safe, etc.? They are safe. I was here we go. Jerry Adcock with uh the radio communications group. Um they are still safe uh in the sense that they will still operate. Um however, we get into that area of um, you know, if something were to go wrong and you say, What was the radio's fault? Well, the vendor could say, but you were past the life cycle order. Okay, and that's really the concern that we run into with many products that we have of that nature. Thank you. Not seeing any other questions without objection, we'll recommend this to the full council. Thank you. Next item. The next item is the public safety system modernization project, the PSSM. It was an umbrella project that had several public safety related sub-projects, including computer aid dispatch, public safety radios, replacement of the public safety radio system, and a law enforcement records management system. All of the these sub-projects, other than the um records management system, have been completed.