The Kenai City Council passed an ordinance that would appropriate a grant for the purchase of portable radios and accessories for the fire department. The city was notified of additional funds available from the 2018 State homeland Security Program grant and the Fire Department applied for 13 portable radios and accessories to complete the replacement of public safety portable radios. $61,330.15 was awarded to purchase 11 portable radios. An additional $9,669.74 was necessary to replace the remaining 2 portable radios.
Councilman Jim Glendening asked the city manager if the fire and police are on the same frequency and could those radios communicate to the state police and CES. Kenai Police Chief Dave Ross said:
“That is correct, they do handle all those channels. The fire department radio will handle CES and Nikiski and, actually, be able to switch to emergency channels that are used statewide as well. The police ones can handle the Soldotna Police, the troopers and other various police agencies. These radios will work for whatever we do for the foreseeable future.”
Kenai Fire Chief Tony Prior also said:
“These radios will also be PDMA capable enabled, which we’ll be able to use the current repeaters that split. We’ll be able to use two radios per repeater on our sites that are on the beacon tower.”
The radios that were being replaced reportedly were no longer supported by Motorola. The funds also would require a sole-source approval to Motorola Solutions to purchase the same brand of radio that the city purchased for both Police and Fire. The city requested, and was approved from the granting agency, to sole-source purchase the equipment and requested the same from Council.
Ordinance 3227-2021 unanimously passed the Kenai City Council.
