Defective pagers for West Windsor emergency personnel to be fixed

Manufacturer’s programming flaw causes reception problem.

By: Emily Craighead
   WEST WINDSOR — A programming problem that caused emergency responders here to miss transmissions from police dispatchers is expected to be resolved within the next two weeks.
   Motorola has agreed to reprogram 63 new pagers, which the township purchased from the company in September, to recognize the weaker signal assigned to the township emergency services by the Federal Communications Commission at the beginning of the year.
   Occasional transmission problems first appeared in January, when the township emergency services began using the Motorola pagers designed to operate on a weaker frequency.
   "The issue that was raised to me was that our volunteer firefighters were no longer able to hear their pages," Councilwoman Kristin Appelget said. "To me, that was an emerging public health and public safety issue."
   Ms. Appelget raised the issue at Monday’s Township Council meeting.
   James Yates, emergency services division manager, was quick to note township residents have not been and are not at risk.
   The communication lapses were "sporadic" and affected only a couple of on-call volunteers, according to Mr. Yates.
   He reported that the Public Safety Committee, including the police chief and the volunteer fire chiefs, discussed the problem at its March 23 meeting.
   "They had a concern, but they didn’t believe it was a danger to public safety," Mr. Yates said.
   The FCC switched the township emergency services from a 100-watt to a 25-watt signal when its license expired at the beginning of the year, to accommodate an increasing number of users in the area, according to Mr. Yates.
   "I’m pleased to hear (Motorola) is writing a fix, but I’m concerned this wasn’t researched prior to us making the switch," Ms. Appelget said Thursday. "I’d like to find out how this happened so it doesn’t happen again."
   The township originally paid about $34,000 for the pagers, but will incur no additional costs to have the pagers reprogrammed.