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Leaders look to unite 911 services
Mahoning County alone spends about $905,000 annually for 911.
YOUNGSTOWN — Now is the time to eliminate costly duplication of emergency dispatching services by combining Mahoning County’s eight 911 answering points into one central dispatching center with one backup dispatching location, local leaders say.
“We think we’re not spending the money wisely by having all these different answering points,” said Anthony G. Paglia, vice president for government affairs at the Regional Chamber. “Some of these communities have come to realize they can’t afford them anymore.
“We’re putting money into all these different systems, and we really can’t afford the most advanced and up-to-date technology,” he added.
Current 911 answering points are in Youngstown — where the city and county each have one — Austintown, Canfield, Boardman, Beaver Township, Struthers and Sebring.
The consolidation effort has begun in earnest with several meetings scheduled on this topic.
The chamber’s Mahoning County Metro Leaders’ Roundtable, a group of local government leaders, will meet from 3 to 6 p.m. Monday in the county courthouse basement to discuss the proposed consolidation.
The county’s 911 executive board will convene at 9 a.m. Tuesday in Boardman Township Hall to discuss this subject.
At 9 a.m. Dec. 16, the county’s E-911 Consolidation Exploratory Advisory Committee will convene its inaugural meeting in Boardman Township Hall.
All three meetings will feature a presentation by Barry Strock, the Albany, N.Y., 911 consolidation consultant the county commissioners hired for $16,900 in August.
“Eight answering points” means paying for eight separate installations of technology every time the county wants an upgrade, said Atty. David C. Comstock Jr., Poland fire chief and president of the county fire chiefs’ association.
A consolidated system would allow for installation of better and costlier technology, but money would be saved by having it centrally installed and not duplicating it unnecessarily in multiple locations, Comstock said.
A consolidated system would be better able to obtain state and federal grants, he said, adding that the consensus of fire chiefs in the association supports consolidation.
With one central answering point, fewer dispatchers will be needed in the county, and cost savings could be achieved by reducing the number of dispatchers through attrition when they resign or retire, Comstock said.
“There’ll be more efficient dispatching. Both crime and fires know no boundaries,” he said.
Clark A. Jones, county emergency management agency director, advocates consolidation.
“There’s current technology that dissolves individual political entity borders — good mapping programs, use of cellular triangulation — the ability to use technology at its best,” said Jones.
As part of the consolidation, Comstock said he thinks the number of police and fire radio frequencies should be reduced for more efficient communications.
Austintown Police Chief Robert Gavalier, who will be that township’s designated representative on the consolidation advisory board, said he is coming to the table with an open mind and thinks all participants should approach their tasks in the same manner.
As a committee member, Gavalier said he would evaluate potential cost savings for the township and the county and whether the same quality of service can be maintained under a consolidated 911 system.
Austintown employs seven full-time and three part-time dispatchers, who answer about 35,000 calls for service annually, and the township spends about $370,000 a year to operate its 911 answering point, including salaries, benefits and electricity.
Noting that there are times when the township has only one dispatcher on duty, Gavalier said he believes the township needs more dispatchers for its round-the-clock operation.
“If it works and it’s effective and it’s efficient, then go for it,” Gavalier said of consolidation. Gavalier is chairman of the Mahoning County 911 executive board and vice chairman of the Mahoning Valley Police Chiefs’ Association, which covers Columbiana, Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
The county now pays for the equipment at the eight answering points, but the individual communities pay their dispatchers’ salaries and benefits.
Mahoning County alone spends about $905,000 annually for 911, including money for alert sirens, and it employs 14 dispatchers in its Youngstown dispatching center.
Paglia and Comstock said the recent economic decline and its financial impact on local communities adds impetus to the 911 consolidation effort.
Although he believes county residents have been well-served by their 911 system since its inception in 1994, Jones said consolidation is in the county’s long-term best interests.
“I believe that, when you consolidate resources and have the appropriate number of trained personnel, that you can provide the ultimate in 911 services for your community,” Jones said.
Some of the largest counties in the country, such as Los Angeles and San Diego, have a single 911 answering point, as do Lawrence and Mercer counties in Pennsylvania, Paglia said.
All 25 Mahoning County communities have been invited to send one voting representative to the 911 consolidation advisory committee, and Maggi McGee, county 911 director, said she expects all 25 communities will participate.
When the committee finishes its work, likely at least a year from now, it will issue a proposed 911 consolidation plan, complete with recommended governance, budget, bylaws, the cost-sharing arrangement among participating communities, and the locations of the main and backup dispatching centers, McGee said.
Each board of township trustees and city and village council would then have to ratify their community’s participation, and the county commissioners would have to approve the consolidation plan before it would take effect, McGee said.
One local official recently told the county commissioners that the advisory board seemed too large to function effectively.
“I think you need fewer people to get some action, rather than more people and get nothing done,” said Abe Bricker, a trustee and former fire chief of Goshen Township.
County Administrator George J. Tablack replied that the advisory board will function under intergovernmental service-sharing guidelines published by the Chicago-based Government Finance Officers’ Association, which call for each participating government to have one vote.
“We hope to have a plan that will stand the test of time,” he said. “We don’t want a shotgun wedding.”
Comstock suggested that the pitfalls of having a large committee could be avoided by having a well-diversified five- or six-member steering committee assemble proposals to be reviewed by the larger group.
Local leaders agree that some hurdles must be overcome. They include potential turf battles, possible attempts to exercise political patronage, achieving agreement on a single dispatchers’ union contract, getting participating communities to agree on a cost-sharing formula and overcoming some communities’ preference for local control over dispatching.
Tablack said he was aware of a failed attempt between Youngstown and Mahoning County to consolidate their 911 centers more than a decade ago, and of other smaller efforts.
The effort between Youngstown and the county dissolved because those entities could not agree on governance of the combined 911 system, he said.
McGee and Jones, however, said this consolidation effort has a better chance of success than the aborted attempts of previous years.
“We’re taking a look at a lot of individuals with a lot of experience, with a lot of know-how, and putting them at the table,” McGee said.
“All of us want to get the best minds together and find out what is the best way to do this,” to produce the finest 911 service the county can afford, Jones said. “Now, you are bringing together the representation necessary to get all of the elements and concerns out on the table.”
milliken@vindy.com