Southampton County approves MOU with Franklin and selects JVC Kenwood for joint radio system

The Southampton County Board of Supervisors on March 26 approved a memorandum of understanding with the City of Franklin and voted to issue a notice of intent to award the county’s portion of a joint radio communications system to JVC Kenwood.

County consultants from CTA presented an assessment and a competitive procurement process that returned proposals from JVC Kenwood, L3Harris and Motorola. Rachel Sauer of CTA said the recommended design for the county and city is “a 700 megahertz P25 Phase 2 trunk system” to improve coverage, operability and interoperability with neighboring agencies.

CTA reported evaluation scores and BAFO pricing: JVC Kenwood scored highest at 100.04 points with a proposed system cost of $7,999,000; Motorola scored 96.19 with a price of $9,191,000; and L3Harris scored 92.93 at $11,706,000. Under the proposed memorandum of understanding, the county’s share of the project cost would be 67% and the city’s 33%.

Board members pressed CTA on long-term maintenance and site costs, and CTA said maintenance pricing shown is spread over 14 years and that the county should budget for additional lifecycle and site-lease expenses. CTA also noted the county might need an additional $2 million to $2.5 million in completion financing beyond the BAFO prices and that cutover could occur as early as January 2026 if the procurement and engineering schedule hold.

After discussion the board voted by voice to approve the MOU with Franklin and to issue the notice of intent to award to JVC Kenwood. The motions passed unanimously.

The approval authorizes staff to begin negotiations and, if successful, finalize a contract and pursue any available grant funding; staff said Davies/Davenport financing work will continue to arrange completion financing. The board stressed that maintenance, site leases and generator costs are separate items that will be considered during contract finalization and budgeting.