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E-comm plan could eliminate need for Steptoe Butte repeaters

Emergency response transmitters on Steptoe Butte may soon come down under a plan by Whitman County’s emergency communications officials.

After years of wrangling with the state parks department over lease rates for the repeaters on the county’s highest peak, the county’s new communications plan may render them moot.

“When you first set up a communications system, the typical method is to find the highest spot, put a tower up there and crank up the power,” said Steve Krigbaum, the county’s emergency communications director.

As communications traffic increases, he said, that method becomes less effective. Eventually, more repeaters with lower power placed lower to the ground becomes a better option.

“We’re getting close to that stage,” he said.

Repeaters owned by the county sheriff’s office, engineer’s office and fire districts 7 and 11 are posted on towers owned and maintained by TransCanada Pipeline Co., and Rural Cellular Corp. who lease space to the public entities.

Krigbaum’s overarching plan for countywide communications places smaller towers throughout the county, which makes emergency communication more responsive and reliable.

He’s currently working to put a tower up at Lamont, and future repeaters are planned for the Colton, Endicott, Tekoa and Naff Ridge areas.

“By building a bunch of lower sites linked by microwaves, the dispatcher can hit all the radios of emergency responders at the exact same time,” said Krigbaum.

It also makes a more efficient system which will likely reduce costs of operation.

That, he said, could eventually reduce the need for the emergency communications sales tax that was approved by voters in 2006.

In addition to the improved communications, the tower sites would negate the county’s need to lease tower space from the state parks department on Steptoe Butte.

County Commissioner Greg Partch reported Monday the state parks department had offered to reduce by nearly 90 percent the lease rate it had proposed earlier this year.

Those entities on the butte were faced with a combined lease payment of nearly $71,000 per year. The reduction brought the lease to nearly $8,000 per year.

The earlier lease proposal prompted a great deal of outcry from local officials. State Rep. Joe Schmick, Sheriff Brett Myers, Prosecutor Denis Tracy, Public Works Director Mark Storey and Krigbaum all lobbied the department to reduce its rates.

Krigbaum said their method for appraising the site appeared to be a statewide standard and did not take into account the difference in property values between urban and rural parts of the state.

“My experience is you just can’t pay the same kind of rent for public safety sites in rural areas that you would in downtown Seattle,” said Krigbaum.

A new system that avoids use of the butte with lower towers, said Krigbaum, would eliminate the need to ever worry about another massive increase in the state’s lease assessment.

 

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