New emergency radio equipment on tap

By Dana Casadei

The Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees approved the purchase of a radio equipment package for the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) at their Monday, November 27, meeting.

To update the EOC in Bloomfield Township, they were awarded an Emergency Operations Center grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for $241,688. This is the second part of how the grant will be spent.

This particular spending – totaling $62,745.63 – will pay for six portable radios and two mobile bases, which would be police and fire programmed and housed at the township’s EOC. Because the FEMA EOC grant is a 25 percent matching funds grant, the township’s 25 percent share for this portion of the project will be $15,686.

John LeRoy, township fire chief, said that with this new radio equipment, they will be able to talk to other stations all across the state, becoming truly unified.

“We can now have seamless communications across the entire group,” he said.

The EOC currently only has one radio, and there are hopes with the new purchases some of the load will be taken off of dispatch centers.

Often there would be bids from different companies that would come in for this type of project, but that isn’t the case with the radio equipment package. Because the equipment is purchased through the state of Michigan and Oakland County contracts, Motorola Solutions is the sole source for this equipment.

The board of trustees voted 5-0 for the approval of this equipment, with clerk Martin Brook and trustee Stephanie Fakih not in attendance.