Grant funds Lombard’s radios for new county-wide system

The top floor of the Westin hotel in Lombard was built to be a communications room, a hub for equipment to help DuPage County’s new radio system function.

But plans changed. The room no longer is needed for the county’s use of the STARCOM radio network run by Motorola and expected to go online sometime next year.

Money spent during the hotel’s construction to provide the infrastructure for the communications room won’t go to waste, however, under an intergovernmental agreement Lombard Village Board approved Thursday night.

About $85,000 in grant funding Lombard originally put toward communications room construction will be refunded and used to buy 48 STARCOM digital radios for the fire department, Lombard Village Manager David Hulseberg said.

“In December 2010, we changed to a better portable radio for the fire service to make sure they have the best technology moving forward,” said Brian Tegtmeyer, executive director of DU-COMM, an organization also known as DuPage Public Safety Communications that is helping plan the switch to the new countywide radio system.

The radios bought with grant money recouped from communications room costs are not the only the radios Lombard’s public safety employees will need to communicate once the county switches to the STARCOM network already in use by Illinois State Police.

The fire department is purchasing 17 additional portable radios with $99,841 in funding from village sources. The Lombard Police Department is receiving 73 radios through a separate grant and buying 12 more with $67,968 of village funds.

Radios purchased by Lombard and other DuPage communities will join a network designed to be interoperable, allowing radio users to communicate with each other across different police and fire departments in the county.

The radios are being programmed and are expected to be issued to users by the end of December, Tegtmeyer said.