By Lyle Moran, Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)
LOWELL ? The city is considering having the wireless radio fire-alarm system it had installed at a cost of $77,849 in 2009 reprogrammed so that some of the signals the new radio boxes send to the city?s 911 Communications Center are diverted elsewhere.
A request for proposals, or RFP, issued by the city in recent months seeks a company that will change the alarm system to send nonfire signals sent by the boxes instead to a private, central-station monitoring company.
Currently, both fire signals and nonfire signals sent by the radio boxes, including 68 municipal boxes, are sent to the city?s dispatch center in the Police Department headquarters downtown. A separate RFP put out by the city calls for a company to monitor the signals that would be sent to the central station until mid-2015.
No cost estimate for the reprogramming was made available by fire or purchasing officials, and there are varying opinions about the public-safety impact of the proposed diversion of nonfire signals, which identify such issues as problems with water flow in a sprinkler system or a low battery.
Fire Chief Edward Pitta directed most inquiries about the proposed signal changes to police officials, saying they could best address why the reprogramming has been proposed.
Deputy Police Superintendent Deborah Friedl said the idea of diverting the nonfire signals from the dispatch center arose months ago during discussions about workload issues between police officials and representatives of the union representing the dispatchers, AFSCME Local 1705. All dispatchers fall under the Police Department?s purview.
?We have to look at what duties are essential for dispatchers to perform and what could be outsourced,? Friedl said.
When nonfire signals come in to a specialized Keltron box in the dispatch center, either the fire dispatcher or the backup fire dispatcher has to acknowledge in the system that he or she has received the signals. If there is time to do so, the property owners are alerted to the signals.
T.J. Cooper, the Local 1705 president and a dispatcher, said she does not think dispatchers should be responsible for handling those signals.
During a busy shift, especially when there is a storm, Cooper said in eight hours she could receive and have to acknowledge as many as 400 or 500 nonfire signals, which dispatchers call trouble signals.
?When we have a storm and there is a major emergency in the city, the trouble signals can tie up two employees instead of allowing them to assist,? Cooper said. ?I don?t feel we have the staff to handle those signals.?
Cooper also highlighted that before the new wireless alarm system being installed, dispatchers did not receive trouble signals. She does not believe the current setup is ideal for public safety.
Friedl agreed that the trouble signals are a ?legitimate workload issue,? but disputed the impact on public safety. She said if there is a major emergency, dispatchers focus on the most pressing tasks at hand and deal with trouble signals later. Furthermore, fire signals, also known as alarm signals, still would go to the dispatch center under the potential reprogramming plan.
Deputy Fire Chief Phil Lemire, head of the city?s fire-prevention bureau, said it is an open debate throughout the country whether it is best for public safety that both fire signals and nonfire signals should be sent directly to dispatchers. Communities handle the signals differently, he said.
Lemire also said the city does not send Fire Department personnel to properties from which a nonfire signal has been sent.
Besides trouble signals, other nonfire signals are called supervisory signals, which identify more serious maintenance issues than trouble signals.
Asked why the city did not have the wireless alarm system originally set up to reroute trouble and supervisory signals, Pitta referred the question to the Police Department.
?It was originally intended that the city?s dispatchers would monitor those signals,? Pitta said.
Friedl said the fire-alarm apparatus in the city?s dispatch center and the whole wireless alarm system were requested by the Fire Department, so fire officials could best address questions about the planned setup of the system.
The city?s RFPs ? both for a firm to reprogram the wireless alarm system and a company to monitor the nonfire signals ? were issued in late May, but Chief Procurement Officer Michael Vaughn said it is unclear when, and if, the city will award contracts for the work.
Vaughn said officials are still reviewing submissions, so he could not divulge the proposals the city has received.
The wireless radio-alarm system was set up by East Coast Security Services of Salem, N.H., which was the low bidder and is the only company that can supply radio-alarm boxes that connect directly to the dispatch center.
Several sources in the alarm industry said they believe East Coast would likely be the only company to propose to reprogram the alarm system because another company would not want to reprogram East Coast?s system out of liability concerns.
Pitta said he was unsure if that would be the case.
Mark Dufour of East Coast confirmed that his company did submit a reprogramming proposal.
On the monitoring side, Rene Demers of Mammoth Fire Alarms of Lowell confirmed his company has submitted a proposal.
The RFP states that the firm with a central monitoring system that will receive the nonfire signals will be under contract by Sept. 1 and the contract would run until June 30, 2015. The monitoring firm would be expected to notify property owners of all nonfire signals.
The annual monitoring fees of $275 per box would switch to being collected by the central-station firm instead of the city, and the firm would provide services at less than the annual fees collected. The private company would then return the remaining balance to the city by Nov. 15 of each year.
The 68 radio boxes for city buildings would need to be monitored, but the winning company would not receive a fee for monitoring those buildings.
As of late May, there were at least 313 operating East Coast radio boxes, with 85 expected to be added to the system.
Copyright ? 2012 LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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