Lewiston officials ask for new citywide communications system

Lewiston’s police and fire chiefs made their pitch Tuesday for $350,000 to $400,000 to create a citywide communications system to replace the piecemeal, bandaged-together system that currently exists on the Lewiston Hill.

“It’s in sad shape,” Lewiston Police Department Chief Budd Hurd told the city council during a budget work session. “Over the years, police has gone up and done their thing and fire has gone up and done their thing. Really, it’s time to start looking at the infrastructure up there and make it a whole system that everybody uses and everybody contributes to at the same time so we don’t go black some day and we can’t talk to anybody.”

The new system could serve all city departments like Public Works and Transit, not just police and fire, Lewiston Fire Department Chief Travis Myklebust said. He noted the deficiencies in the existing system that were exposed by a just-delivered audit of city communications.

“You’re sitting on a ticking time bomb,” Myklebust said. “It’s working, but it won’t work much longer.”

Parts of the radio system are 50 years old and they sit on a piece of land that is difficult to access, especially in the winter. If the council can come up with the funding, Myklebust said the replacement system would be simpler and easier to maintain. He also noted that some nearby agencies in Washington use the radio repeater for their communications, and could be asked to contribute to a replacement.

City Administrative Services Director Dan Marsh said those potential partners could be identified through a planned feasibility study of a joint dispatch center the city may pursue with Nez Perce County.

City Manager Alan Nygaard, responding to a question of how the city might fund a new system, said the audit results were just received Friday, so more time is needed to analyze the potential sources. One question that needs to be answered is whether the city would take on the project all at once, or tackle it in pieces over more than one year.

Councilor Bob Blakey asked if any of the federal funding in response to the COVID-19 pandemic could be put toward a new system, and Myklebust said it may be possible since it would improve emergency personnel’s ability to respond to coronavirus-related calls.

In other business, councilors latched onto Marsh’s idea to piggyback the eventual move of the city police station onto the financing Nez Perce County is planning to use for a new courthouse. County elected officials have tentatively decided to build next to the existing courthouse on Main Street, but their preferred design would require the demolition of the police station to create the needed space.

But Nygaard said a new police station could cost as much as $12 million, and even scraping together every possible city resource would only come up with about half that amount. The county plans on using certificates of participation to finance the courthouse, where the holder of the certificates would pay for the building and the county would lease it back over a period of years.

The latest cost estimate for the courthouse is $32 million, and Marsh suggested that the county simply add the cost of moving the police station to that amount. He said the city potentially has the revenue streams available to make payments on its share of the certificates.

Mills may be contacted at jmills@lmtribune.com or (208) 848-2266.