City to spend $624K on upgrades
Council votes to proceed with replacing police communications systems in place since the 1980s.
KETTERING — The city of Kettering plans to spend $624,000 to upgrade outdated communications systems at the police department that have been in place since the 1980s.
The city will replace the police department’s current computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and records management system (RMS).
City Manager Mark Schwieterman told the city council that the current Cisco system used by police for dispatch and records management is no longer supported and serviceable. He said his staff was recommending the city enter into a contract with Spillman Technologies to replace those systems.
“The estimated cost is $624,000,” Schwieterman said. “At the end of the day, our computer-aided (dispatch) system will be the same for both police and fire utilizing the Spillman system.”
The city’s fire department had separately started a transition to the Spillman-serviced system.
“I will note that some of these costs will be depreciated, therefore finances will monitor the purchasing process and the need for future supplemental appropriations for the funding of this contract,” Schwieterman told council members.
Council voted unanimously to proceed with the upgrade.
“It is a significant upgrade for us. As a matter of fact, we have had our CAD and RMS system since the 1980s,” said police chief Chip Protsman. “This is also the system that is going to be used by both the police department and the fire department, which obviously is an advantage to us because our dispatch center does both police and fire.”
Spillman has more than 1,900 customers in 45 states.
“With Cisco, we were doing upgrading by bringing other things on, but it was just different systems that we were trying to patch together to keep up with technology,” Protsman said. “This upgrade will be put together in one package which will be much easier.”
Now, the fire and police departments will prepare to train on the new equipment.
“We were way overdue for an upgrade,” Protsman said. “The fire department is in the process of switching over to it and we will be up and running with the new system at about the same time.”