A Call for Communication about Proposition One

It’s simply the most important item residents of Columbia and Boone County have been called on to approve in many years.

Voter approval by a simple majority of Proposition One in the April 2 election will set in motion upgrades to the entire Joint Communications operation, transfer to the county and construction of a secure new facility to include long overdue expansion and modernization. Opposition has already surfaced to the proposed three-eighth of a cent sales tax increase, opposition that is — to put it bluntly — rather dumb, stupid, naïve and not in the public interest. On the other hand, designated sales taxes in 50 other Missouri jurisdictions demonstrate the apparent public acceptance of the need to fund these essential 9/11-type facility upgrades utilizing this revenue stream.
Our public safety past
Here’s some reminiscence about how far the region has progressed in public safety communications over the past 50 years to underscore why passing Proposition One is so important. Joint Comm today represents the communications consolidation under one roof of 13 different health and public safety organizations that began some 35 years ago, but this was hardly the communication situation in 1963.

Visitors to the Columbia Police Department 50 years ago in the original Police and Fire Building on North Seventh Street — for me, it was to fork over a quarter to buy the tiny metal license plate bicyclists were strongly urged to obtain — faced the dispatcher and a 50-watt Motorola two-way FM radio carrying the designation KAB-278. Next door, the Columbia Fire Department had just obtained its own communications equipment to comply with a federal directive that prohibited shared use of the Police Department frequency in a curious reciprocation of “joint” communication. Everything was rather casual around that old brick building, and many minutes would often fly by in between use of the radio.

A stone’s throw away on the first floor of the courthouse, the Boone County Sheriff’s Department had its own radio setup imperfectly covering the sprawling jurisdiction from an antenna on the dome of the building. Law was otherwise enforced in the county by Missouri State Highway Patrol Troop F out of Jefferson City — a long distance call incidentally to 636-7141 — with seven cars assigned to the area. A special radio channel linked the patrol with our sheriff and the CPD. Law “enforcement” on the University of Missouri campus was essentially a night watchman service. While the rudiments of what is today the Boone County Fire Protection District were being developed, volunteer departments stood by in Ashland, Hallsville (MYrtle 6-2334), Harrisburg (OXford 3-2345), Rocheport (OXbow 8-2345), Centralia (EMpire 2-2131) and Sturgeon (SKyline 7-1310), but otherwise, country residents were pretty much on their own if a fire broke out.

Ambulance service was a strictly private affair furnished in the immediate Columbia area by the city’s two principal funeral homes: Parker and Memorial. Vehicles available on a 24-hour basis were air-conditioned and oxygen equipped. Service was described as “competent, dependable, courteous, prompt and reliable,” and in one case mentioned the availability of “hospital-trained ambulance personnel.” If the sleek Cadillac vehicles weren’t being used to convey a deceased person to a funeral establishment, the injured were taken to one of Columbia’s two principal hospitals, then vastly smaller in size, scope and range of available services.
Two-way communication
It’s hard imagining how people functioned when communication systems were so crude by today’s standards or, in fact, did not exist at all. Two-way mobile telephone service was starting to become available 50 years ago, but the service was limited, rather costly and restricted to vehicles. A small group of subscribers said to number fewer than 50 — veterinarians were among the early adopters — vied to use one of the two available channels; waiting time for a dial tone often dragged out for minutes.

The reminiscence moves on to KFRU, where starting in the mid-1950s equipment to monitor local and area fire and public safety agencies had been in the studio/office on Business Loop 70 East, the newsroom downtown in the Tribune Building and in the manager’s home. One felt in touch with what was going on just listening to the squawking stack of Motorola monitors; there were four of them, one each for the sheriff, Columbia Police, State Highway Patrol and the Columbia-SHP link. Based on what they heard from the monitors, News Director Eric J. Engberg, one of his assistants and even station manager Mahlon R. Aldridge Jr. would make tracks to reach an accident, fire or other event. Station vehicles equipped with KFRU’s own two-way radio gear were used over several decades for thousands of live-on-the-scene reports.
Further need to communicate
I was an early adopter when the first scanners came on the market more than 40 years ago. I continue to listen, though it’s more sporadic these days. Joint Comm is a very busy place. At times the volume of “traffic” is overwhelming. What confronts our region today is a communications revolution only the most prophetic could have foretold 50 years ago. In 1963, baby steps for the Internet were still six years away under the ARPANET rubric. Communications satellites, Telstar, Syncom, Early Bird and others created new channels giving international dimension to communication. The rudimentary outline of cellular telephony was being sketched out at Bell Labs, and practical lasers were under development to further broaden communication capacity with a kick from the perfection of fiber optics by the Corning Glass Works, not to ignore the advances in computers, software and the myriad devices so intertwined with the need to communicate.

Consider our progress over the past 50 years and, more specifically, how much safer and more secure we are with coordinated joint communication among 13 health and public safety organizations. The dazzling leap forward in modern communication and interagency relationships spurred by various devices utilizing the Internet and cellular telephony has brought this about. There simply is no turning back.

Proposition One needs your approval. It’s a matter of public health and safety for each and every country resident.