There are plenty of crossed fingers in Broward County hoping another major police incident doesn’t occur before a new public safety radio system starts operating. But time is slipping away as the county struggles to nail down the final details.
Commissioners have been criticized for not moving faster to replace the county’s old and overloaded system — a system that was crippled during the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting in 2017 and the Parkland school shooting last year.
The new system would help police and firefighters responding to 911 calls, improving their ability to transmit and receive messages anywhere in the county, including in schools, condominiums and hospitals. It will also be able to handle more traffic, so police at a major crime scene aren’t having to resort to using hand signals to communicate or aren’t able to get an open line to dispatchers.
The most recent stumbling block the county has faced is where to put a Hollywood antenna needed for the system. The city wants the antenna placed on top of the Circ downtown apartment high rise, where it will be less conspicuous than erecting a 325-foot tower in West Lake Park.
The Hollywood tower is one of seven being built for the public safety system, which county officials want to have up and running by the end of the year.
A majority of county commissioners agreed with the city in January, but that position changed Tuesday after commissioners received an engineering consultant’s report that said the antenna system at the Circ would take longer to build, would provide sub-optimal reception for police and firefighters, and would cost more.
The commission plans to move forward with the West Lake Park location, which had been opposed by nearby residents and others who said it would wreck the aesthetics of the park’s natural areas. Because of park covenants, putting a tower there will still require the approval of eight of nine commissioners.
Hollywood officials challenged some of the assertions in the study with a consultant’s report of their own that said the delay might not be as long, the cost not as great and the degraded radio service not as significant as the county report suggested.