City officials want to meet with the state to discuss replacing the city/county radio system.

The Board of Mayor and Aldermen Monday authorized Mayor Paul Winfield to request a meeting with members of the Mississippi Wireless Communications Commission, which oversees state and local government wireless communications systems. No date was set.

“The meeting’s being called to discuss our options to replace the radio system,” city information technology specialist Bill Ford said. “By law, the commission must approve any major radio purchases. This letter is giving them notice that we intend to replace the system.

“The system is at the end of its life. The last thing we need is to wake up one morning and not have a radio system,” he said.

Attempts to contact officials with the Wireless Communications Commission about the letter were unsuccessful. Ford said, however, that any radio system the city and county selects will have to be able to link with the statewide MSWIN radio system.

“They will not approve any system that is not interoperable with the state system,” he said. “What we’re doing is asking the commission if they’ll work with us.”

He said work to replace the radio system would not begin until late spring or early summer, adding officials are still a long way from buying equipment.

“We haven’t done the engineering yet,” he said.

Winfield estimated in October that replacing the system would cost $5 million to $7 million.

Vicksburg and Warren County share a central 911 dispatching center that is funded primarily by monthly surcharges on residential and business telephone bills and supplements from the city and the county.

It is overseen by a commission of city and county department heads and elected officials created in 1989 to administer centralized dispatching of emergency personnel.

City and county officials discussed in October replacing the aging communications system after the city was notified by Motorola, which has the contract to maintain the system, that it soon will be unable to maintain or repair the equipment because parts won’t be available.

Much of the equipment at the center was installed in 1993, Winfield said in October. Ford said Motorola technicians last week worked on the system and its three repeater towers as part of a rebanding project, which involved switching the radio system to a new frequency band to improve performance.

“They finished last Thursday,” he said. “We’ve made the adjustments and the system should be in better shape. We still have some fine tuning to do, but we should be able to operate without any major problems.”