PUBLIC PROTECTION COMMITTEE
Meeting Date: April 30, 2025
Subject: Community Warning System
Submitted For: David Livingston, Sheriff-Coroner
Department: Office of the Sheriff
Presenter: Julie Beach, CWS Manager and Leslie Monroy, Senior Emergency Planner
Contact: Enid.Mendoza@cao.cccounty.us
Referral History:
The matter of the Multi-Language Capability of the Telephone Emergency Notification System (TENS) / Community Warning System (CWS) had been on referral to the Internal Operations Committee since 2000 and was later reassigned to the Public Protection Committee (PPC) in 2008.
The PPC met with Sheriff and Health Services Department staff in March 2008 to receive an update on the County's efforts to implement multilingual emergency telephone messaging. The Committee learned that the Federal Communications Commission had before it two rulemaking proceedings that could directly affect practices and technology for multilingual alerting and public notification. Additionally, the federally-funded Bay Area "Super Urban Area Safety Initiative" (SUASI) had selected a contractor to undertake an assessment and develop a five-year strategic plan on notifications of public emergencies, with an emphasis on special needs populations. The Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services reported to the PPC in April 2009 that little had changed since the March 2008 report.
On October 18, 2010, the PPC received a report from the Sheriff's Office of Emergency Services on the Community Warning and Telephone Emergency Notification systems, and on developments at the federal level that impact those systems and related technology. Sheriff staff concluded that multilingual public emergency messaging at that time was too complex to be implemented at the local level and should instead be initiated at the state and federal levels. New federal protocols were being established to provide a framework on which technological industries and local agencies could work to develop such capabilities.
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