ORDER-2022-78 : Acceptance of the FY22 Firefighter Safety Equipment Grant awarded to the Melrose Fire Department by The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Department of Fire Services, in the amount of $18,901.80.

Transcript (~6 min @ 9:08)

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▶ 9:02 Jen Grigoraitis: public comment made by president snell seconded by vice chairman gliorelli all in favor hi hi okay the motion carries moving on to our agenda the first matter before us tonight is order 2022-78 acceptance of the fy 22 firefighter safety equipment grant awarded to the melrose fire department by the commonwealth of massachusetts department of fire services in the amount of eighteen thousand nine hundred and one dollars and eighty cents and i believe chief kalina is here to speak to us just chief before you begin may i have a motion to suspend rule 37b so we can hear from the chief so moved so we have a motion to suspend rule 37b made by councillor mcmaster seconded by president sanella all in favor aye aye the motion carries welcome

▶ 9:52 Speaker 4: chief the floor is yours everybody good to see everybody um yeah i come before you um with the hope of the acceptance of this grant uh it's in the amount of eighteen thousand nine hundred and one dollars and eighty cents we're going to use these funds to purchase three portable radios

▶ 10:12 Speaker 4: for the fire apparatus but for those of you that don't know what a portable radio is it's the radio that we wear on the harness it's the lifeline of communication between the firefighter and the dispatch and the incident

▶ 10:32 Speaker 4: commander our current radios are falling apart old yeah they were 2004 but we purchased them in 2009 motorola does not support any of the repairs of these radios as they break sometimes it's just a knob or collar mic but so our pool of portables is dwindling down

▶ 10:51 Speaker 4: so this is a much needed three radios however we're trying to also ascertain funding for to replace the whole fleet of the radios which is quite expensive you see what

▶ 11:10 Speaker 4: three of them cost and so with that I would hope that you support this this

▶ 11:17 Jen Grigoraitis: grant Thank You Chief President Sinella followed by Councillor Stewart Thank You

▶ 11:21 Christopher Cinella: Madam Chair welcome chief thanks for coming I just quick question we you mentioned we're gonna be upgrading the fleet eventually of all the radios we on

▶ 11:32 Speaker 4: analog still or these are uh they're not digital they're not they're um uhf i'm not a radio google uh kevin walsh is that guy but uh he programs our radios for us and uh um would they be capable of

▶ 11:49 Speaker 4: like would they get digital i believe uh yes i believe that asking for a constituent that has

▶ 11:52 Christopher Cinella: a scanner what's that asking for a constituent that has a scanner i believe there's a component

▶ 11:57 Speaker 4: in the programming of the radio obviously it costs a little bit more for that module to do that but they i believe they can be uh adapted to go to digital down the road okay but our main radio system is not digital so we're not looking for that and it would have to be both police and fire

▶ 12:18 Speaker 4: right because you also uh police i believe we can't i mean that fire i believe we can program

▶ 12:25 Speaker 4: the police into them i mean under after 9 11 that was the uh the presidential order was to get the interoperability between all the agencies whether it's police fire ems dpw and also when you have a large scale incident we can all communicate thank you counselor stewart thank

▶ 12:44 Robb Stewart: you madam chair thanks chief for being here tonight uh just one one quick question is this grant require any matching funds or will this fully compensate for the expense

▶ 12:58 Speaker 4: that's being incurred that's a great question no this is no matching funds from the city this is just an outright $19,000 that's good to hear great thanks

▶ 13:09 Speaker 5: chief thank you manager thank you any counselor Jamal Dean Thank You chairman

▶ 13:11 Maya Jamaleddine: thank you for being with us tonight um how many radio does the city have Portables?

▶ 13:18 Speaker 4: Yes. So we have one portable for each riding position and a couple of spares. So the riding positions are four, six, 10, 12, 13 riding positions. Each apparatus has a spare one in case one breaks. And then we have six portable spare radios if we were going to put a second ambulance

▶ 13:47 Maya Jamaleddine: and service they could get grab some spare radios and um and we're only replacing three

▶ 13:51 Speaker 4: this is only the three my goal is to put these in the officers positions because they do the most radio communication however every radio is important it is the lifeline if a firefighter were to get trapped that's how they're going to signal their mayday off their radio and are the other

▶ 14:06 Maya Jamaleddine: radios the same status as the one that we are replacing yeah they still work but again when

▶ 14:12 Speaker 4: they break if a knob breaks um or if something goes wrong in the the um the wiring the motherboard of the radio itself uh we ship them to motorola they can't they can't fix them and they don't even they don't even want you to ship them anymore because they stopped december of 20. so we are

▶ 14:34 Maya Jamaleddine: you know like predicting that we're gonna have to down the road replace all of them yes

▶ 14:41 Speaker 4: yeah like i said we're looking to uh secure funding um to replace our radios okay well

▶ 14:53 Mark Garipay: thank you so much thank you councillor Garipay thank you madam chair at this time i'll make a motion to recommend for passage order 2022-78 second second so we have a motion made by