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Council discusses statewide CAD/RMS transition; later approves police union MOU 4-0 in closed session
Summary
Council reviewed a state-led project to replace the IMC records and dispatch system with a statewide CAD/RMS solution, discussed budget and implementation timing, and after an executive session announced a 4-0 approval of an International Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 637 memorandum of understanding.
Town officials and police leadership briefed the Foster Town Council on Feb. 13 about a statewide replacement of IMC, the existing computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records-management system. Councilors heard that IMC—developed in the 1990s and widely used across Rhode Island—has had no recent development and will be replaced by a newer statewide CAD/RMS hosted in the cloud; the state police planned a March 18 go‑live and Foster had been invited into a second wave (targeted for October).
Captain John Barrett (described in the meeting as second in command) and other police staff explained the new system is hosted in Amazon Web Services and will be managed as a statewide service. The presenters said that hosting and software maintenance will be handled centrally, reducing the town’s need to host servers locally; local needs would be primarily Internet access and user devices. Presenters advised the town consider an LTE backup or similar redundancy so dispatch could operate if the primary Internet connection fails.
Officials said the state's program subsidizes a portion of the transition and that ongoing software costs were expected to be roughly $1,000 more per year than the town’s current IMC maintenance fee, but that offsetting savings could come from eliminating local hosting and server maintenance. Councilors requested updated financial numbers, an updated memorandum of understanding (the draft reviewed was dated September of the prior year) and time to vet costs with the town’s IT vendor; staff said the project manager encouraged the town to join the October wave but would place Foster later in the rollout if it missed the second-wave window.
The council voted to enter executive session under Rhode Island General Laws 42-46-5 for negotiations and litigation matters. After returning to open session the council announced that one vote had been taken in executive session: the council approved a memorandum of understanding with the International Brotherhood of Police Officers, Local 637, by a recorded tally of 4–0 in favor.
Councilors said they would request updated MOU language, seek detailed cost comparisons for hosting vs. statewide hosting, and address training and redundancy needs before formalizing a budgetary commitment.
