Liberty’s model of efficiency

Consolidation of Liberty Township’s 911 emergency phone service serves as a win-win-win proposition. It’s a move toward greater government efficiency in the township, a step toward increased public safety for residents and a model for regionalization of public services for the Mahoning Valley.

Liberty trustees last week voted to shutter the township’s 911 dispatch center and enter a three-year contract with the Trumbull County 911 Center. As a result, the township taxpayers collectively will save more than $200,000 per year.

What’s more, public safety will not be compromised; indeed it will be enhanced. Through consolidation, Liberty will enjoy the county’s 911 upgrades, which include a system that can trace location of calls made by cellphones.

With so many cost and service benefits resulting from economies of scale, the consolidation should serve as a template for other communities throughout the Valley. Indeed Hubbard is examining a similar scenario. Other standalone 911 centers operating independently in the Mahoning Valley should do likewise.

A VALLEYWIDE 911 NETWORK?

That includes the city of Youngstown, where Mayor Charles Sammarone is progressively pursuing consolidating the Valley’s largest city’s 911 system with that of Mahoning County. And why stop there? Why not aim for one Valleywide 911 network?

A model can be found in our own backyard. In Western Pennsylvania, Mercer, Lawrence and eight other counties, including Allegheny County with a population of 1.2 million, are taking a mega-regional approach to public safety with its plans to use a shared next-generation 911 system by early 2013.

Such models may seem overly grandiose for some Valley communities, where the politics of small have created too many cost-draining fiefdoms with too much duplication of services. But with local government budgets increasingly strained and public demands for efficiency at all levels of government growing louder, Valley leaders can no longer afford to ignore reasonable appeals for consolidation and regionalization of 911 and many other public services.