Drafter
Clerk 06/16/2020
Title
AN ORDINANCE authorizing the King County executive to execute the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network Operator Interlocal Cooperation Agreement with the cities of Auburn, Bellevue, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, Renton, Seattle and Tukwila, relating to the ownership, governance and management of the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network after construction.
Body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. King County currently has a countywide emergency public safety radio network. The King County Emergency Radio Communication System ("KCERCS") supports over seventeen thousand radios and nearly two hundred separate police, fire, emergency medical and other governmental agencies.
2. Portions of KCERCS are separately owned by the Eastside Public Safety Communications Agency, Valley Communications Center, the city of Seattle and King County, with a jointly owned switch controlling the entire network.
3. KCERCS is over twenty years old and is increasingly unsupported by the supplier of the system's equipment, software and related parts.
4. The cities of Auburn, Bellevue, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, Renton, Seattle and Tukwila and King County ("the arties") determined that it is in the public interest that a new public safety radio system, referred to as the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network ("PSERN"), be implemented to provide public safety agencies and other user groups in the region with improved coverage and capacity, as well as uniformly high-quality radio communications.
5. The parties entered into the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Implementation Period Interlocal Cooperation Agreement ("the implementation period ILA") that designates King County as the lead agency for planning, procurement, financing, implementation and limited operation of PSERN. The implementation period ILA also establishes a Joint Board to oversee the PSERN project implementation.
6. The owners of KCERCS each agreed to make their 800 MHz frequencies available to the PSERN project to be used in the new PSERN system and to eventually be licensed in the name of the PSERN operator.
7. The parties have negotiated a separate agreement, the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network Operator Interlocal Cooperation Agreement, to create a new separate governmental agency under RCW 39.34.030(3)(b) that is organized as a nonprofit corporation under chapter 24.06 RCW to assume the ownership and control of PSERN following full system acceptance.
8. In addition to creating the new agency to be called the PSERN operator, the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network Operator Interlocal Cooperation Agreement establishes the terms for governance of the PSERN operator and the terms under which the PSERN operator will undertake responsibility for the ownership, operations, maintenance, management and ongoing upgrading and replacing of the PSERN system during its useful life.
9. The PSERN joint board, created by the implementation period ILA, approved the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network Operator Interlocal Cooperation Agreement by unanimous vote.
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE COUNCIL OF KING COUNTY:
SECTION 1. The executive is authorized to execute the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network Operator Interlocal Cooperation Agreement, in substantially the same form as Attachment A to this ordinance, with King County and the cities of Auburn, Bellevue, Federal Way, Issaquah, Kent, Kirkland, Mercer Island, Redmond, Renton,
Seattle and Tukwila for the Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network operator and to take all actions necessary to implement the terms of the interlocal agreement.