Friday, March 23, 2012
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Lonny Fitzsimmons, a 911 dispatcher for Hubbard, keeps an eye on monitors connected to security cameras throughout the city. For the 2013 budget, the city is looking into options for cutting costs for 911 dispatching.
Hubbard
City officials here have become the latest in Trumbull County to say operating their own 911 dispatch center has become too expensive.
Earlier in March, the city council approved a 2012 budget that reduced police department spending by $50,000, eliminated more than $80,000 from capital-improvement spending and withheld for the second-straight year all funding to the parks department.
“Passing the budget was just the beginning,” said Mayor John Darko. “We’re already looking at next year.”
Specifically, the city is looking to its 911 dispatch center as a chance to save for 2013.
For 2011, the city spent more than $300,000 on dispatching including equipment, salaries and benefits to its four full-time dispatchers and wages for its three part- timers, said Police Chief James Taafe.
He said next year the city is looking to upgrade its system with the rest of Trumbull County, but purchasing the upgrade would cost the city “six figures,” Taafe said.
“Times are changing,” Taafe said. “Our economy is changing, and we have to look at spending tax dollars in the most efficient way possible.”
The city twice has met with Ernie Cook, the county 911 administrator, but negotiations are preliminary.
Hubbard is looking at two options. The first is getting rid of the local dispatch altogether and paying a yearly fee to the county 911 center.
Taafe said early estimates for the annual cost is between $40,000 and $50,000, but all Hubbard dispatchers would lose their jobs.
The second option is what city officials are calling the “10th chair.” It would keep dispatching at the police department, but the city would lease a fiber-optic data line from Trumbull County, allowing a Hubbard dispatcher to act as a long-distance county dispatcher.
Although the city would keep its dispatchers, the equipment upgrades, training and maintenance would be paid by the county.
In 2011, the city spent $20,000 in equipment maintenance, Taafe said.
He said under the 10th-chair option, a call from Hubbard would be sent to the county 911 center where a computer would reroute the call back to the city’s dispatch.
“It’s about a quarter-of-a-second delay,” Taafe said. “It’s not a significant delay at all.”
He said the city is sending the county the mapping of the fiber-optic system that exists in the city to see how much the leasing would cost. So, the amount of savings isn’t clear yet.
Both Taafe and Tim O’Hara, the chairman of city council’s safety committee, are leaning toward the 10th-chair option.
“I’d rather keep the dispatcher here and lease out the line,” O’Hara said.
Taafe added that the local 911 dispatchers answer to more than just police and fire emergencies. He said they answer calls for power outages, waterline breaks and other city matters on week nights and weekends.
“I think if you lose the local dispatcher, you lose the local touch,” Taafe said.
Before any decisions are made, the city awaits a memorandum of understanding that will lay out actual costs for both of the options.
But Hubbard officials agree that a standalone local 911 dispatch center is not possible for 2013.