I think the first thing to realize is the people of the NWS and most EMAs aren't stupid; they've been at it a while. They may not be right, though. I expect they get a lot of heat for sounding sirens 'unnecessarily;' so they get a little gun-shy. As for radars, there ought to be a project to integra...

What everybody else said. Someone has to do some diagnostics first to find out what the problems are. The siren is at the end of the chain:

Activation system
Local controls (controls at the siren)
The siren itself

It looks to me like the ground behind the tracks is rising.

I don't know, but it won't be much. More likely will be a service agreement covering x amount of preventive maintenance, guaranteed response times, things like that.

If the county solicitor is behind the bid that's very good; if Federal tried to contest the bid and the county is behind it, then a court is far less likely to grant an injunction. Remaining danger: Federal goes to Federal court because of "diversity of citizenship" (ASC, Federal and the c...

You're going to inject a criminal complaint into the middle of this already chaotic situation? That's... interesting. Do you want this purchase to go forward?

But if the requirement isn't there, move for a summary judgment against Federal and sanctions for perpetrating a fraud on the Court. It would begin to look pretty dodgy pretty quickly when the court takes into account the other bidding processes that failed, especially when Federal conveniently dro...

It's a damn shame, but don't be surprised if Federal is able to get a court order against this bid. If the RFP specified that warranty information was to be provided and it wasn't there, then there's a material question of fact whether ASC's bid was responsive or not, and that almost requires a hear...

My experience with many things is that a pig's breakfast like what you guys saw is a fault of the system. When I get bollocks-up service from a business, it's usually because nobody trained the poor chump they threw out there naked. This bid was set up to fail. Glad it came out the right way.

That's why they should have a contracts and purchasing department that guides the other departments through the process. Somebody has to know how the system should work, and it's frankly not the EMA's job to be acquisition experts. They should know about public safety and disaster relief. There shou...