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City emergency radios merge

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Cedar Park, Leander join interlocal system

Communication for emergency personnel in Cedar Park, Leander and the rest of the county could become even easier in the coming weeks with the establishment of the William County Radio Communications System.

The William County Radio Communications System will soon replace the County Wide Integrated Communication System (CWICS) currently in place. CWICS is a communication system used by Cedar Park, Hutto, Round Rock, Georgetown and Williamson County for emergency communication.

Cedar Park Assistant Fire Chief James Mallinger said Cedar Park bought into the CWICS system in 2001 when “the city was replacing radios and upgrading equipment.”

With the current CWICS system, each city splits the ownership responsibilities, but with the new system, Williamson County will own the radio infrastructure.

Once Williamson County is the owner, “Each city can join and pay a maintenance fee,” said Mallinger. “Every fire and police department in Williamson County will be on the system or about to move to [it].”

The same radio system that is used under CWICS will be used with the new system, said Mallinger. “The only change is the county will own the infrastructure.”

The maintenance fee for each entity will be based on the radios they use on the system. “They can buy into the system based on the number of radios [they have] on the system,” said Mallinger.

The current cost is $17.50 per radio, but that cost could go down as more entities join, said Mallinger. The cost cannot go higher though because the interlocal agreement (ILA) has frozen the current cost for the first five years.

Mallinger said the decision to make the county the owner of the infrastructure was a process that has been two years in the works. “We thought it would be safer to have the county own it,” he said.

By leaving the ownership between the cities, residents would be paying for the infrastructure twice - through city taxes and county taxes. With the change in ownership, residents will only pay once and the costs will be evenly split among the cities, said Mallinger. It also keeps the cities involved from having to pick up the extra costs if one city can't afford the system at some point.

All police, fire, EMS, parks and public works departments for all cities in the county are eligible to join the system. The county sheriff and hazmat departments will also be part of the communication system.

Cedar Park has four departments using the system: fire, police, field operations and parks departments.

Mallinger said the communication system has been very beneficial for the city. “It's made communication more fluid for us. We can talk to all fire [departments] around.”

The radios also pick up statewide channels, so when the department is out of range of the local channel, it still has the capability to communicate, said Mallinger. “These [radios] are more interoperable than any radios we've ever had.”

Austin also uses a similar system and other counties are looking to adopt the radio system. “It looks like this is going to grow,” said Mallinger.

Each member of CWICS must first approve the switch to the new system. Georgetown was the first to approve the ILA. Cedar Park approved the agreement at its March 13 council meeting.

The Williamson County Commissioners Court recently approved the agreement as well. The agreement is now waiting on approval from Round Rock and Hutto. Mallinger said the agreement is on the agendas for the upcoming meetings in both cities.

E-mail jennifer@hillcountrynews.com

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