Dedicated to improving responsiveness and performance of Montgomery County Public Schools
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Happy Mother's Day
A very happy Mother's Day to all our moms, supportive, fierce and wonderful. Thanks for all of it. Best wishes to all the mothers who work so hard for their children every day.
Stop the fear-mongering and misinformation! Since Mother’s Day, when there were multiple reported outages in the Montgomery County emergency radio communications system, certain County politicians, responders, staff, and contractors have been fear-mongering and disseminating misinformation. Even though a local resident-expert, telecom engineer Louis Wilen has de-bunked the problems, the truth is being disregarded. Instead, we continue to be misled by remarks that seem designed to foment hysteria, particularly concerning the safety at our local schools. This is what Engineer Wilen found and communicated:
"There are two unrelated communications issues with the county's communications system. The county report co-mingles the issues. The recent acute outages were caused mainly by the failure of the timing element equipment. Those issues have been resolved by replacing the timing element equipment. (This is confirmed in the county report from June 14.) Such equipment is easily available, brand new, from many manufacturers. The chronic localized communications problems are caused by the fact that 800 Mhz signals are attenuated by buildings and by thick building walls. That problem can be mitigated by (1) localized building booster systems, which are actually required by code but have been installed in only 25 buildings in Montgomery County (mainly government buildings -- I can give you the list of buildings if you want), or by (2) adding more tower sites to the current system so that heavily urbanized areas have better coverage. Note that the county report makes no mention of the legally required building booster systems. The county permitting department has been negligent by approving occupancy permits for buildings that should have the booster systems but don't have them. In the case of solution #2, the towers don't even have to be very high. They just have to be in close proximity to the areas that have spotty coverage. In many cases, the "tower sites" can be the buildings that are experiencing the spotty coverage."
Those who provide the misinformation and use fear-tactics do so to promote their agendas. They are dismissive of neighborhood concerns and they demonize residents who question the County consultants’ recommended locations for radio towers. But the public needs to ask questions about the emergency radio communications project, which is costly and has long-term impacts for our County. And we need to question: What are the fear-mongers’ true motives, ethics/conflicts, and what information has not been transparently provided to the public?
Stop the fear-mongering and misinformation! Since Mother’s Day, when there were multiple reported outages in the Montgomery County emergency radio communications system, certain County politicians, responders, staff, and contractors have been fear-mongering and disseminating misinformation. Even though a local resident-expert, telecom engineer Louis Wilen has de-bunked the problems, the truth is being disregarded. Instead, we continue to be misled by remarks that seem designed to foment hysteria, particularly concerning the safety at our local schools.
ReplyDeleteThis is what Engineer Wilen found and communicated:
"There are two unrelated communications issues with the county's communications system. The county report co-mingles the issues.
The recent acute outages were caused mainly by the failure of the timing element equipment. Those issues have been resolved by replacing the timing element equipment. (This is confirmed in the county report from June 14.) Such equipment is easily available, brand new, from many manufacturers.
The chronic localized communications problems are caused by the fact that 800 Mhz signals are attenuated by buildings and by thick building walls. That problem can be mitigated by (1) localized building booster systems, which are actually required by code but have been installed in only 25 buildings in Montgomery County (mainly government buildings -- I can give you the list of buildings if you want), or by (2) adding more tower sites to the current system so that heavily urbanized areas have better coverage.
Note that the county report makes no mention of the legally required building booster systems. The county permitting department has been negligent by approving occupancy permits for buildings that should have the booster systems but don't have them.
In the case of solution #2, the towers don't even have to be very high. They just have to be in close proximity to the areas that have spotty coverage. In many cases, the "tower sites" can be the buildings that are experiencing the spotty coverage."
Those who provide the misinformation and use fear-tactics do so to promote their agendas. They are dismissive of neighborhood concerns and they demonize residents who question the County consultants’ recommended locations for radio towers. But the public needs to ask questions about the emergency radio communications project, which is costly and has long-term impacts for our County. And we need to question: What are the fear-mongers’ true motives, ethics/conflicts, and what information has not been transparently provided to the public?