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Committee advances $76M Motorola contract and financing plan for citywide radio system
Summary
The committee forwarded a resolution to purchase an 800 MHz radio system from Motorola Solutions (purchase/installation/maintenance) and authorized a financing plan (up to $35M) to cover the balance. Staff said the contract will replace aging public-safety radios, upgrade coverage and add GPS tracking; the total project estimate in the analyst packet is about $106 million.
The Budget & Finance Committee on Oct. 19 forwarded a resolution authorizing the Department of Emergency Management and the Department of Technology to enter into purchase, installation and maintenance agreements with Motorola Solutions for a citywide 800 MHz radio system, with a contract amount not to exceed $76,000,000 and an available financing arrangement of up to $35,000,000 to fund the balance.
Michelle Geddes, project manager for the Department of Emergency Management, said the city’s current public-safety and public-service radio systems are more than 15 years old, increasingly unreliable and approaching the end of vendor support. The proposed project consolidates public-safety, public-service and airport radio systems onto a single network, procures infrastructure and approximately 9,000 radios, and builds two new radio sites (in Bayview Hunters Point and near San Bruno jail) to improve coverage and redundancy. Geddes said the project includes GPS-based location services for officers and improved interoperability for strike-team deployments across the Bay Area.
Geddes and supervisors discussed an 18-year maintenance and support term in the proposed contract. Geddes explained the structure: three initial years to maintain the existing system during cutover, roughly one year of warranty, and a subsequent 15-year maintenance term for the new system; she said staff evaluated alternative models (shorter refresh cycles, lease arrangements) and cited savings from a bundled maintenance approach while retaining standard termination provisions.
Budget analyst Harvey Rose summarized the packet’s cost estimate: $105,946,003.96 as the project total. Staff said they expect to be on budget and to deploy the first portable radios to police, fire and sheriff personnel next year. Tom O'Connor, president of the San Francisco Firefighters, urged support, telling the committee the upgrade is critical to firefighter safety in high-rises and subways.
Supervisor Yee moved the item and the committee forwarded the resolution with a positive recommendation to the full board without objection; Supervisor Mark Farrell was excused.
