Before I met with Brian, I was under the impression that he didn't like the idea of having sirens at all. He actually emailed me out of the blue a couple weeks ago asking if I'd be able to stop by his office sometime this summer. I work 40+ hours a week during the summer so we had to set up a meeting in the evening for earlier this week. I only planned on staying for about an hour but ended up staying for two, talking sirens pretty much the whole time.
When I met with him, it seemed like he had totally switched his position on sirens and now sees value to them.
We basically talked about what all goes into siren installation (location is a little more complicated than I thought) like how you can't install sirens in places that might effect bird migration
.
We talked about how there's an optimum frequency that siren companies are now trying to shoot for to make them carry further and penetrate better (somewhere between 500 and 600hz I think). That was his biggest concern because it really effects how many sirens we would need, the total cost, and where they'd be located. I told him what I knew and tried to do a little research. van_nuke_pe was really helpful with this part and I forwarded what he told me to Brian.
There are several directions we may be going in from here. In the meeting with the commissioners, they could either decide to put it on the November ballot or not. If they don't, the residents of Delaware County, including myself, could petition to have it added. If it passes, there will be a slight tax added to each resident of Delaware County which would be like $6.00 for someone who owns a $100,000 home. The average home in Delaware County costs like $250,000 so it would be like $18.00 or whatever per home for 3 years or so. If it doesn't pass, Brian said they'd try to "nickel and dime" a system together. So far, Orange Township where I live is the only township that has come forward and said that they'd put in their own system if the county commissioners decide against it.
At this point, I'm getting sirens where I live no matter what direction the county goes in which is fine with me though I'd rather see us go with a county-wide system.
Just for reference, here's what my county already had in place
Midland WR-300 weather radios at all the schools, hospitals, nursing homes, ect.
Reverse911 which DOES work when it's set up right (which it is now).
ThunderWarn which sends a text message for weather warnings, evacuations, ect.
We're also keeping the following sirens in the system.
Delaware's 7 2001s
Sunbury's Whelen Vortex
and Galena's Whelen WPS-2802.
If you haven't caught on yet, I'm pretty friggin excited that the county seems to be heading in the right direction with this.
