Well - here is my two cents.
Most local police . fire traffic is still located in the lower frequencies in my area - due to the fact that it would be impossible to outfit every fire station with all digital equipment.
In my area of the country - Pennsylvania - the fire and ambulance has all been moved up into the 400 MHZ bands.
Some of the local fire stuff is still in 33 mhz in Indiana county due to the fact that UHF does not work well in the mountains and they only have 3 repeaters in the whole county.
The State Police - along with several other agencies - has all been moved to the Star Net - which is a scrambled digital and cannot be listened to with a regular old scanner. As a matter of fact, they even have their own cell phone towers and they have their own internet inside of their vehicles - that even with GPS can get them to most any location.
The local EMS is even going to require every gas well site in Pennsylvania to have their own mail box and address.
So Star Net - along with cell phone frequencies has all be turned into digital garble and cannot be listened to anymore.
I'm not even sure if they support the older analog cell phones anymore - so about the only thing in my opinion that a scanner is good for - other then listening to air traffic controllers - between airplanes and airports would be the fire and the ambulance.
At least in my area.
I too have several Uniden scanners and about the best analog scanner I have found for my needs is a BC 890 XLT which was opened up for the cell frequencies and also upgraded to scan faster.
http://www.uniden.com/products/index.cfm?cat=scanners
For local traffic - you could probably get away with a hand held programmable scanner, or a nice base station such as a BCD 996XT
http://www.uniden.com/products/productdetail.cfm?product=BCD996XT&filter=Base
Most cities have gone to a trunking type system where more then one branch uses the same frequency at the same time and you cannot just program in one frequency and always get the same branch.
It even switches frequencies between one time that the mic is keyed and the next depending on which frequency is busy.
Two way radio - I would suggest that you join a ham radio club and get the skinny on owning a ham radio and being a ham radio before you take the plunge and plunk down hard earned money on something you might not be interested in - in the first place.