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What's Next for 911 Dispatch

Sehvilla Mann
/
WMUK

After years of false starts, Kalamazoo County is the closest it’s ever come to overhauling its 911 dispatch system.

Last night the county commission cast the final vote needed to approve an agreement between the county’s five emergency service agencies. It lets them merge their services into one central dispatch system.

Supporters say it’s an essential step toward better communication between different authorities. But now local governments have to agree on a plan – and how to pay for it.

Kalamazoo Public Safety Deputy Chief Karianne Thomas has worked on the dispatch issue for two years. And she’s excited about plans to centralize dispatch systems.

At the KPS building on Crosstown Parkway, she walks into the dispatch room three county agencies already share. Banks of screens glow in dim light, as the dispatchers wait for the phone to ring.

“They’re all in the same room, but they’re all receiving calls from their respective jurisdictions,” she says.

Those would be Kalamazoo County, Kalamazoo Township and Kalamazoo Public Safety.

“We have three agencies that all have three separate employers, that are under three different bargaining units, that have to abide by policy and procedures to whomever they work,” she adds.

And the county’s other two dispatch authorities – Portage and Western Michigan University - don’t even share a room yet.

Thomas says the public might wonder why emergency authorities want a new system. After all, she says, if you call 911 someone will answer the phone and send help. But Thomas says when agencies have to talk to each other, communication isn’t as streamlined as it should be.

“We have officers in different jurisdictions that are two blocks away from each other, but because they work in – work for different jurisdictions have different radio systems. They can’t even talk to each other without going through the dispatch center,” she says.

The City of Portage uses a different frequency for its police and fire radios than other county agencies. And it’s not just that 911 officials hate to see any delays in the flow of information.

It’s also that the county’s technology is out of date. These days, people don’t just call 911 – they text and send videos. Thomas says that local dispatchers need new equipment to keep up. But it’s expensive,

“And by coming together and consolidating those resources and moving forward in the technology, the gaps that different areas may have, we can solve those problems together,” she says.

That’s the idea behind the agreement to plan a consolidated dispatch center. Each participant – WMU, Kalamazoo Township, the cities of Kalamazoo and Portage, and the county have approved the concept. Together they’ll create a new organization with a board, a director, and committees on issues like technology, to plan a central system.

County Administrator Peter Battani says it’s likely to include
“Probably one location, one command structure, one system of communication, one system of data exchange. And it may be a hybrid of some kind,” he says.

“We will have a backup system somewhere and on a long term basis it will be cheaper than building five silos. We’ll build one silo instead of five silos,” he adds.

But how to fund central dispatch remains an open question.

Last night the county took a step to raise money for the planning authority. It approved a monthly 42-cent charge on all phones that can call 911, effective next July. The county would have to hold a popular vote to charge more than that. Battani says that would be one way to pay for a new system.

“Could be a dollar, dollar and a half, two – I don’t know what it will be. And it could be completely funded out of that surcharge.

“Or the five parties could agree that it will be some amount of voter-approved surcharge, or no voter-approved surcharge at all, and just the 42 cent surcharge and contributions from the local dispatching agencies.”

The 42-cent phone charge is expected to bring in about 1.2 million dollars a year. But the five currently spend about 7.3 million dollars a year on dispatch service.

Of course, nobody knows how much the new center would cost – since it hasn’t been designed yet. And Battani says if the leaders try to settle those issues now,

“Of: Are we going to fund it all surcharge, partially surcharge, and or general fund obligations, and how much would those be and who would pay more and who would pay less, we’ll never get there, okay. We’ll never get there.”

Concern about “never getting there” isn’t an idle worry. This is far from the first attempt to bring central dispatch to Kalamazoo County, even as most Michigan counties have adopted some kind of central 911 system.

Battani says long-standing “animosity” between local governments played a role in the failure of a plan put forward more than ten years ago.

“But the ice has melted, it’s continuing to melt, people are working together and thank you very much to everyone in those units and also particularly to the City of Portage,” he says.

Portage didn’t buy into past proposals. Mayor Pete Strazdas says while he wasn’t “at the table” for the last one, the city had concerns about everything from the suggested radio system to the division of power.  

And it didn’t want to pay other governments’ legacy costs for things like police and fire pensions.

“In the past maybe it was something that others might wanted to consider and that of course was a potential show-stopper,” he says.

The current plan rules that out. But it does allow members to leave if they don’t like the new authority’s proposals. Strazdas says he thinks everyone is committed – at least for now.

“So they need to work diligent, they’ve got to work fast and communicate whatever this vision of what this final product looks like and I’m hopeful that they can do that within a year,” he adds.

The new dispatch authority can begin work in early November, 30 days from last night’s agreement.
 

Sehvilla Mann joined WMUK’s news team in 2014 as a reporter on the local government and education beats. She covered those topics and more in eight years of reporting for the Station, before becoming news director in 2022.