Hood County workshop explores adding 24/7 monitoring, fee changes and fiber to shore up Granbury Regional Radio Network

Granbury and Hood County officials met in Granbury on April 30 to review the Regional Radio Network that links local law enforcement, dispatch centers and other public-safety partners and to consider expanded 24/7 monitoring and network-hardening steps. Chris Collins, chief information security officer for the City of Granbury, told the Hood County commissioners’ workshop that the current system lacks continuous engineering oversight and includes “spurs” or single points of failure that make some sites vulnerable to outages.

Collins described the network’s technical split between an IT stack (firewalls, VPNs and administration) and a communications stack (the P25 authorization functions) and said vendor contracts with Harris provide maintenance but not the continuous security operations center coverage Collins believes the GRN needs. “With today’s technology, you need 24 by 7, 365, eyes on glass watching it,” Collins said, adding that the city is proposing an enhanced monitoring package that would move the system from a reactive posture toward proactive remediation.

The proposal would increase per-radio costs above the longstanding $13-per-radio maintenance figure that many partners have paid. Collins explained that $13 historically covered a pro rata share of a multi‑year maintenance and core-replacement plan (a 15-year maintenance schedule was discussed) and that adding the Knox/SOC/rapid-response service would add roughly $3.12 per radio (Collins rounded discussion figures when speaking to the group). He also warned that some equipment and microwave links supplied by third parties are excluded from Harris coverage unless separate contracts or agreements are in place.

Commissioners and attendees pressed staff on several financial and contractual points: whether Harris had in practice been providing after-hours support without charging, what the original contract language required for off-hours work, and how past incident records should be examined to determine billing history. One commissioner said, “Failures in communication cost people’s lives,” underscoring the stakes of outages and the need for redundancy and monitoring.

Technical and governance issues were central to the discussion. Collins identified towers and microwave links that act as “spurs” and noted where looped fiber or multiple microwave paths would reduce single points of failure. The city has invested in equipment (Collins noted roughly $2.1 million the city paid for Harris equipment and other figures of $2.5M and $3M were cited during discussion) and the city said it could share more documentation and a proposed fee spreadsheet with participating entities when available. Staff discussed fiber options and outreach to providers (United Co-op, Spectrum were mentioned) and grant-slicing approaches to spread the cost of redundancy across jurisdictions.

Several participants asked whether responsibility for the core should rest with the city — which built and currently operates the core — or with the county, given that radio counts on the network are heavily weighted toward county users (Collins said Hood County accounts for the majority of radios on the system). Collins cautioned that simply shifting the core to another host would not remove technical spurs; the underlying redundancy and funding issues would remain.

Next steps agreed at the workshop were procedural: the City of Granbury will present a draft interlocal agreement to its council (a staff target meeting date was discussed) and circulate the draft to Hood County and other entities for review and possible addenda (for example, specific language covering VPN access and shared liability in the event of a breach). County staff said they would request supplemental documentation, including a fee spreadsheet and historical incident/billing records, to evaluate whether and how the per-radio fee should change. The workshop adjourned without formal votes.

The discussion put technical risk, contract scope and the tradeoffs of increased monitoring at the center of the next round of negotiations. Officials said the interlocal draft and the city’s cost spreadsheet will be distributed to participating jurisdictions for review before any binding changes are adopted.