$7,000 Donated to Help Pay for Radio System

The newly formed Community Safety Foundation is donating $7,000 for conversion of the city’s emergency communications network to the new countywide 800-megahertz system.

Police officials said the donation, which will pay for architectural work on a building to house the emergency communications center, should speed the conversion by several months.

Seal Beach is joining with Los Alamitos and Cypress to share the cost of constructing the 800-square-foot communications center above the city jail on Seal Beach Boulevard. The building will have bulletproof glass.

The foundation, created in October to build a police substation at the pier, has since donated money to open a second substation at the Rossmoor Center.

“It’s easy to go to people and ask for their help when you’re promoting the community and promoting safety,” said Jack Haley, the foundation’s executive director. “They immediately step up.”

The city, which is operating on a tight budget, had not set aside any money to participate in the new 800-megahertz system, which will link all police, fire and public works agencies in the county to a single network.

The new system is considered crucial for the coordination of emergency agencies as the county’s population grows. The old 400-megahertz system is so overloaded that making radio contact between jurisdictions sometimes takes several minutes, police officials said.

To defray costs, Seal Beach will finance $762,000--its share of the new system--over 15 years. Including interest charges, the city will pay a total of $1.3 million.

Mayor Gwen Forsythe said Haley’s fund-raising efforts have been invaluable to the beach city’s efforts to combat crime.

“It’s people like him who are making our public safety decisions easier,” Forsythe said, “because we basically don’t have the funds.”