911-call consolidation plan worries Niles police chief

By Jordan Cohen

Simeone is concerned the city won’t be reimbursed for spending on 911 upgrades.

NILES — Police Chief Bruce Simeone charged that a Trumbull County plan to consolidate 911 emergency calls could result in unacceptably slow responses — or perhaps none at all.

The chief also said that the plan may jeopardize more than $80,000 in reimbursements to Niles for its 911 dispatch upgrades.

Simeone told Niles Council Wednesday that a proposal by the county’s 911 director, Mike Dolhancryk, would significantly reduce trunk lines that accept emergency calls.

The proposed county plan would reduce the number of dispatch centers, referred to as Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) to three, one of which would be Niles.

“That’s going to add more pressure to our dispatchers,” Simeone said, adding that calls under the plan could take longer to get to a dispatch center that may be far from where an accident or incident has occurred. He said there was a possibility that if dispatchers are busy, a call could go unanswered.

“It’s like playing Russian Roulette,” Simeone said. “You know eventually someone is going to get hurt.”

Mayor Ralph Infante said other PSAPs in Newton Falls, Girard and Liberty are not happy about the plan and he expects to meet Thursday with their representatives to discuss it further.

The 911 discussion followed a question to the chief from Thomas Scarnecchia, councilman at large, about the amount of money Niles could expect to receive for its 911 upgrades. Simeone could not provide a definitive answer because, he said, the county plan “is not specific.”

Simeone said afterward that the city spent nearly $500,000 for its upgrades and hoped to receive “between $80,000 and $100,000 in reimbursements, but the way it looks now, we might not get anything.”

Simeone said he expected reimbursement funds to be available from $1.5 million allocated for 911 operations in Trumbull County, but charged that the county’s plan is vague about distributing any of that money to Niles.

Niles had submitted its 911 plan to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio last June. So far, according to Simeone, there has been no word on acceptance from PUCO. He also said Trumbull County commissioners have been unsympathetic to the city’s concerns.

Last month, representatives of the Trumbull County 911 Planning Committee voted 3-2 to accept a plan put forth by Dolhancryk, though committee members Infante and Newton Falls Mayor Patrick Layshock opposed it.

Committee members county Commissioner Daniel Polivka, Johnston Township Trustee Donald Barzak and Warren Mayor Michael O’Brien supported the new plan.

The county was under some pressure to approve a plan and submit it to the state by Dec. 31 in order to use $1.5 million for service upgrades being held in escrow.

Dolhancryk said under the new plan, the $1.5 million will be used primarily to update Warren’s system and Niles’ system as backup answering centers to the county 911 center.

The other communities with their own PSAPs will see some upgrades as well as benefit from upgrades installed at the county level, he added. The upgrades will allow emergency dispatchers to pinpoint where 911 calls made from cellular phones originate.

Dolhancryk has said the plan calls for the county 911 service to take over all emergency calls for Liberty Township and the cities of Newton Falls, Lordstown, Girard and Hubbard. The plan says a county 911 dispatcher will enter all information from 911 calls into the system and transfer the information to the jurisdiction from which the call originated.