Cathy Osten

Sen. Osten Secures State Bonding To Help Purchase Norwich Police Radio System

NORWICH — State Senator Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) today announced that she has helped secure a $500,000 state grant to help Norwich taxpayers afford the cost of a new police department radio system – a 70-year-old system which voters just decided at the polls in November should be replaced at a cost of $2.7 million.

Sen. Osten said the state aid will help reduce the cost to local taxpayers by nearly 20 percent. The state grant is on the State Bond Commission agenda for its meeting next week, Tuesday December 11, 2019, in the Legislative Office Building in Hartford.

“By a three-to-one margin, Norwich voters approved replacing this outdated public safety radio system just last month, and Mayor Nystrom told me that state financial assistance for this project was a top priority for him. So I made it a top priority for the citizens of Norwich,” Sen. Osten said. “I was a corrections officer for over 20 years. I know how important fully operable radio communications are to the security of front-line peace officers and to the tens of thousands of people they protect. I want to thank the governor and the State Bond Commission for helping to fund this public safety project in Norwich and for saving local taxpayers a lot of money.”

“The $500,000 grant for the police radio project obtained by Senator Osten will contribute greatly to the funding of an important public safety project,” said Norwich City Manager John Salomone. “The city is very thankful to Senator Osten as we move forward to modernizing the city’s radio systems.”
In November, Norwich residents overwhelming voted at referendum to spend $2.7 million on a new police radio system, which was first installed in the 1940s.
The new system will ‘piggyback’ on the State of Connecticut’s existing emergency broadcast infrastructure of state-owned radio towers, thereby saving taxpayers even more money and eliminating some of the communications ‘dead spots’ that police officers encounter in the 30-square mile town with elevation variations ranging from 511 feet on Hearthstone Hill to just 75 feet above sea level at Versailles Pond.