Supervisors approve RCS lease for Red Mountain lookout station

San Diego County will be leasing a portion of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection telecommunications site at Cal Fire’s Red Mountain lookout station.

A 5-0 San Diego County Board of Supervisors vote, Aug. 4, authorized the director of the county’s Department of General Services to execute the lease agreement, authorized the Department of General Services director to amend the lease as needed for future equipment configuration modifications and found the lease categorically exempt from California Environmental Quality Act review. The initial lease will be for 10 years retroactive to July 1, and three lease options if exercised would extend the lease to Dec. 31, 2041.

The Regional Communications System which allows emergency and public safety agencies to communicate with each other was established in 1995. The RCS provides public safety and public service radio communications to San Diego County and Imperial County and includes those two county governments, 24 incorporated cities, fire protection districts, state and federal agencies, tribal governments and medical operations. The county procured and constructed the RCS and has operated the system while the participating agencies shared the cost of the original system infrastructure. The RCS consists of 50 radio sites in the two counties which support 24 public safety dispatch centers and serve more than 20,000 user radios.

The county and the participating agencies realized that the RCS would eventually approach the end of its useful life and require replacement. In 2010, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department contracted with technical consultants to assist with planning the next-generation system. A working group consisting of RCS partner agency executives made recommendations regarding system design and cost apportionment, and county staff members worked with more than 100 public safety agencies and medical operations to develop the requirements for a new system.

In December 2013, the board of supervisors approved an agreement for participating agencies which established a cost apportionment model and served as the operating and business agreement between the parties. In June 2015, the county supervisors authorized the director of the county’s Department of Purchasing and Contracting to issue a request for proposals to replace the existing RCS, to award a contract upon successful negotiations and determination of a fair and reasonable price and to amend the contract as required to reflect changes to services and funding allocation subject to the approval of the sheriff. Motorola Solutions Inc. was awarded the contract in June 2016.

The RCS upgrade includes three phases. Phase I was the system design and planning phase which included detailed technical designs, project planning, and identification of new radio facilities. Phase II is the implementation of the new technology at existing RCS facilities consisting of the procurement of the new radio system hardware and software, the replacement of the existing hardware with the new equipment and the migration of dispatch center equipment and user radios to the new system. Phase III is the new site development, the construction of facilities and the integration into the system.

Phase III includes seven subphases, so each of those subphases may be exercised individually. Motorola and the sheriff’s department worked together to identify potential sites which will provide the required geographic coverage. In November 2016, the board of supervisors voted 5-0 to exercise a contract option for facility improvements at the Harmony Hill site in southeast Escondido and authorized negotiations, to be ratified by subsequent board of supervisors’ action, for the purchase and lease of sites for RCS support in seven areas including one on U.S. Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton and one or two sites in unincorporated northeast San Diego County. In 2017, the county supervisors approved a lease agreement with the Department of the Navy for a radio facility on San Onofre Peak at Camp Pendleton.

The sheriff’s department currently operates an RCS site at a commercial tower facility at Red Mountain. The co-location with Cal Fire will improve critical communications services to first responders operating in the Fallbrook area, so the sheriff’s department recommended the new site.

Cal Fire has a U.S. Bureau of Land Management permit to operate on the Red Mountain site, and that permit expires at the end of 2041. The lease extension options will allow the sheriff’s department to maintain the RCS facility at the Cal Fire site until the end of the BLM permit period.

The annual rent for the 2020-2021 fiscal year will be $29,527.

Joe Naiman can be reached by email at [email protected].