History of the regional dispatch project
This project has been something that has been discussed several times over the last 5+ years. In the last 2 years this project took a new direction with Summit County involved in this potential project along with hiring a consultant to work with the County to review the viability of a project like this. This information and the initial report from the consultant was provided back to the interested parties in June 2020. This information was presented to Stow City Council at our June 25, 2020, meeting. I had multiple questions about the project related to both the governance of the new Council of Governments (COG) and the facility which resulted in around 40 questions I had sent over to the County and the consultant related to the project. Stow City Council members also were invited to tour a similar facility called the Chagrin Valley Regional Dispatch and ask questions of their director, supervisors, and see how their dispatch operations worked. I did take advantage of this offer and did tour their facility.
The City of Stow’s Charter also required that it be placed to our voters if they would support the concept of Stow moving to a regionalized dispatch model. Council voted to place this item on our ballot at our July 9, 2020, meeting and it was on the November 2020 ballot where 58% of the residents supported the idea of regional dispatch center and 42% of residents were opposed. This allowed the City to continue the negotiations that were taking place between the interested parties. These negotiations did not move as quickly as initially planned by the County and, in May 2021 when Council members asked for an update and questions, there were still a lot of details to be finalized. Multiple Stow council members attended tours and information sessions at the new potential dispatch center in Tallmadge. I attended the first of these groups with Mr. Feldman and we learned the status of the project and arrangement. The update and plan at that time was for the County to have information back to the interested parties needing to review and update by late August/early September 2021. However, this timeline was delayed, and information was not available for the City until mid-November 2021. At this time, it was requested for Council to vote in this item by year end of 2021. When this request was received Council was in the middle of our budgeting process to approve it prior to the end of the year vs. waiting until the new year. This along with the unexpected passing of Councilman Altieri in end of November, a planned medical procedure that initially had me missing a Council meeting in December, and the hesitation of an outgoing Council member to vote on an issue like this that he would not be a part of in 2022 made this timeline not feasible for the City of Stow. I had lengthy discussions with the County, explained the feasibility issue for Stow, and collaborated with them to lay out a timeline for a review of the project in detail Stow with a vote to occur by January 27, 2022. The County understood the City of Stow’s position and communicated with all the parties involved our position as well. It was agreed that Stow would follow the January timeline and it would have no impact on Stow’s position if we did vote to join the COG and regional dispatch project.
Current Project
Now that the history of this current iteration of the project is laid out, I will share some of the details of the project. This new COG will begin after the official documents are signed in early February 2022 and the new regional dispatch facility will be a project overseen by the County that is currently out to bid for the design and renovation of the building at the corner of Howe Rd. and State Route 91 in Tallmadge. Along with the regional dispatch center, the City of Akron is also going to co-locate their dispatch services into this facility, the County is also going to move their radio operations and shop into this facility, and other space that will be used as meeting space for the County. Summit County is issuing debt to fund this project that will be shared among the County, the City of Akron, and the COG. The COG will then share and split these costs among the member cities of the COG, offsetting the cost with income the COG will receive from cities that would contract with the regional dispatch for dispatch services.
The initial COG members will consist of five members, Summit County, Cuyahoga Falls, Stow, Fairlawn, and Tallmadge. These 5 entities will also bring 11 contract communities that will pay for services but not be members of the COG. The estimated annual cost of the regional dispatch operations is $5.9 million, as of now it is estimated that the COG members and contract communities have budgeted $5.1 million for their various dispatch operations in 2021. Stow’s budget for 2021 for our dispatch center is $1.35 Million, our proposed share to join the new dispatch center estimates our annual costs will be approximately $964,000. The numbers associated with the COG can get very confusing when taking into account multiple assumptions that may or may not occur. First, is that potentially our costs could be reduced if Stow had a staff reduction when/if the contract communities we currently dispatch for move to the regional dispatch center. This scenario would likely still put Stow’s potential operating cost closely to our proposed share if we moved to the COG. Second, there was a scenario considered what Stow would pay if we became a contract community with the COG instead of being a COG member. While this number was based on a lot of assumptions not fully known yet, it was determined that potential cost would be approximately $1 million annually. Overall, financially, there does not look to be a significant cost difference at the moment in the annual operating costs for Stow to operate independently or as a member of the COG.
This project is a significant commitment and undertaking for all the entities involved, and of course, any project of this size has the potential for setbacks and delays. However, after spending a significant amount of time evaluating this project, current operations, and future of our operations, I supported joining the regional dispatch. I believe this dispatch center will continue to grow and that additional COG members and contract communities will join in the future as well which can help further reduce costs. While cost is a factor for this, ultimately, concern for the quality of services delivered to our citizens is the first and foremost factor of importance. While currently we can’t compare the future center to our current operations since the first is not operational yet, there are several factors that I considered important to determine that the future center will meet (and likely exceed) our current operations in the future. First, the new center will switch to a new model of call takers and dispatchers that allows call takers to remain on the line entering relevant information into the system, while other dispatchers will be responsible for dispatching the necessary services to the residents. Second, the new dispatch center will employ a training officer and have a dedicated training space for new dispatchers, allowing for a better training model to prepare new dispatchers. Third, the new center will be able to have both a quality assurance officer along with a supervisor for each shift to help oversee the operations and investigate any issues. Fourth, this dispatch center will have to meet the applicable national standards that apply to dispatch centers. Fifth, with the combination of various Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) into one location it will result in less calls needing to be transferred between PSAPs. So again, while you cannot compare apples to apples at the moment, these things are all improvements over both Stow’s current operations and several of the other entities as well. Those reasons listed above, and some other reasons as well, are also all reasons that Stow’s dispatchers unanimously support the move to the regional dispatch center. The City of Stow has also had a lot of turn over and vacancy in our dispatch center in the last several years for various reasons. The creation of a new state of the art center that will have better pay, training, and advancement opportunities would also become a competitor that we would have to compete against for staffing of these critical positions.
There were also a few other reasons I supported this move as well. The first is that there is currently equipment that we are contracting with through the City of Akron that is necessary for our dispatch operations that they will no longer support once this center is up and running. In the near future, we would have to incur the costs associated with sourcing our own equipment and paying to maintain it. There is also a lot of this that is already a shared service. The entities joining the COG are already part of a joint agreement that consolidated the software purchase for the software used in our all the dispatch centers. This included the purchase, implementation, and training of this new software across the various PSAP locations. The joint software project will also make the transition to the regional dispatch center much more efficient because the dispatchers are already familiar and trained on the same software. Regional dispatch centers are NOT a new concept, many states have been doing this for a long time, and even within our state, there has been a movement towards consolidation to reduce the number of PSAPs. The regional dispatch model also works to merge and reduce the distribution of the number of PSAPs that receive 911 funding in each county, meaning the City of Stow would likely see a reduction and potential elimination of 911 funds distributed to the City. While there are probably a lot of other additional ancillary reasons that are not directly tied to regionalizing, I felt that the facts laid out above favored that in the end, Stow will end up as a member of the regional dispatch center and that there were benefits of doing it now vs. taking a wait and see approach. It is a big project and a big commitment, but as is often said in my house, nothing worthwhile is easy.