Commissioners approve county radio project RFP
DOVER-FOXCROFT — A request for proposals for Piscataquis County’s $6.9 million emergency radio system project was approved by county commissioners on Tuesday morning.
Vendors will have until mid-summer to submit bids in response to the request for proposals, which was written by consultant Normand Boucher Communications Design Consulting Group of Barrington, New Hampshire.
A pre-conference bid meeting is scheduled for June 2 for those considering bidding on the radio project to submit questions to Boucher and Project Manager Chris Lavoie.
Finalized proposals are due by July 30 and then Lavoie and Boucher will present the bids to the commissioners.
The endeavor to fix the county’s emergency personnel radio communications has been years in the making. Since 2020, Piscataquis County and municipal emergency officials have been updating outdated infrastructure and finding solutions to issues stemming from the hilly and mountainous terrain of the region.
“Where we are at right now is the opening pitch of the ballgame,” Lavoie said.
“All questions will be asked up until July 18, from then we have seven days to answer all the questions that we get,” he saad. “We have to provide them by July 25 so it gives us a little checks and balances. We are not just keeping the vendors in check we are keeping ourselves in check to make sure everyone is treated fairly.”
A six-member radio committee will meet with Lavoie and Boucher to look at the request for proposals scoring criteria.
“We will most likely come back to you sometime in September to make a decision,” Lavoie said. “My guess it will be a contract discussion so it’s going to be in executive session probably with both Norm, (committee chair and Brownville Fire Chief Shawn Mitchell) and myself and we will have that discussion and weigh out the different contracts that we’re looking at.”
The commissioners will then approve a vendor to start on the project. If all goes well then the project should take 24 months, Lavoie added.
There are a lot of moving parts to a radio system, especially with the county not owning all the infrastructure, Lavoie said. With many sites being leased, tower owners will need to be involved and engineers will need to conduct structural analyses.
“There’s a lot of work that needs to be done between now and hanging equipment but we’re on the right track,” Lavoie said.
“When I said we were at the opening pitch of the ballgame I was not exaggerating, this is the first step that we need to get this project going,” he said.
“We feel that this RFP in moving forward is in the best interest of what our needs are and with what we have for a budget, that is the key,” Mitchell said. “We feel this is the most appropriate for what we can do for the county with the funds.”
Lavoie plans to update commissioners on a quarterly basis. The planned September decision on vendors is “a big project milestone,” he said.
County officials have been discussing funding options. Last fall, Boucher said seven new tower sites would cost $2,695,000 above the $4.2 million already awarded in federal monies, to bring the project total to $6.9 million, an amount that still needs to be finalized.
There is no guarantee that federal funds will be secured, but grants could reduce the near $2.7 million cost, which county commissioners may send out to a bond.
The county paid Communications Design Consulting Group $27,000 for a feasibility study on radio communications, which was presented in November 2021. Before the feasibility study, Boucher spent months meeting with members of area fire and police departments and toured sites around the region, including the locations of about a dozen transmitters.
Lavoie, who is the Penobscot Regional Communications Center director where he helped oversee a communications upgrade, was hired earlier this spring.
Lavoie will be paid $85 an hour as needed over the estimated two years-plus of the project. A previous estimate had Lavoie working 1,000 to 1,500 hours for $85,000 to $127,500 over the duration of the project.