911 call center at 'critical mass'

Voters to consider $6.9 million bond

By JACOB DORAN / Bigfork Eagle

Few in Flathead County would argue that the county's current 911 call center isn't antiquated, problematic and incapable of accommodating the kind of upgrades needed to keep up with the current rate of growth. The question for most is whether taxpayers can afford to foot the $6.9 million bill.

Voters will make that decision in less than two week, on November 4, when the $6.9 million 911 call center bond appears on local ballots, along with a $10 million land and water conservation bond. In itself, the call center bond would result in an annual property tax increase of $12.48 on a home with an assessed value of $200,000.

While $12.48 seems like a small price to pay for more efficient emergency service and faster response times, many taxpayers are still reluctant to vote for any increase in property taxes, in light of the current instability in the economy and the fact that taxpayers are already footing the bill for a growing number of services, not to mention a bailout in excess of $700 billion.

Flathead County 911 project coordinator Mark Peck said he understands the frustrations of tax payers but stressed that the new call center is critical to the county, which could soon be reclassified from being a medium to a high call volume area.

"The fact that we're bringing this forward now with the economy the way it is is a testament to how critical this is," Peck said. "If we weren't at critical mass, we wouldn't move forward with it. We are at critical mass—the number of CAD events that we respond to has just about doubled in four years.

"The days of us being a quiet little county are gone. The fact is, we can no longer continue to operate with the equipment that we have. As communications technology has advanced, we have not kept up with it. We're living on borrowed time."

As it stands, the municipalities of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls each rely on their own dispatch centers for their particular police departments, in addition to the county's current 911 center, which is located in the Flathead County Sheriff's Office. Consequently, calls may by answered directly by the individual dispatch centers or come through the county's call center and then be redirected to the appropriate city dispatch center.

Coordinating calls between these centers is problematic because of confusion regarding jurisdictions and degrees of service, not to mention the limitations of existing outdated equipment. When 911 calls come in to the Flathead County 911 Emergency Command Center (FECC), which is staffed around-the-clock, the dispatcher sees a map with the caller's location, as well as their name, address and the emergency services that should be notified for that area. The 911 dispatcher must then relay the caller's information to the dispatcher in whose jurisdiction the call should be handled and responded to.

That poses a number of challenges, since the number of calls handled by the county almost doubled between 2005 and 2007 and continues to be higher for each month of 2008 than they were just one year ago. The FECC alone responded to more than 6,000 events this July, compared to 3,800 in July of 2005. The combined CAD events responded to by the county sheriff's office and police departments in Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls in 2007 climbed to a record 101,047.

One of the major problems that 911 dispatchers experience in relaying accurate information to responders is that the actual location of certain cell phones from which calls may originate does not show up on the dispatch map. Rather, the map displays the towers from which the signal is being transmitted.

The four-pronged upgrade plan entails first rebuilding the county's radio communications system, a transition from analogue to narrow-band digital, which will be paid for almost entirely by state and federal dollars. The second prong will be the dispatch center itself. The third will be upgrading to a computer aided dispatch that allows dispatchers to locate the emergency responders nearest to the scene using real-time GPS unit location and also know what they are equipped with. The final step will be to combine and consolidate all of the county's response functions and equipment under one roof and one chain of command.

Once that consolidation occurs, Peck said the savings will amount to $60,000-70,000 in personnel cost each year, as well as another $30,000 per year in savings on leased space.

Peck conceded that grant money will allow the county to purchase $480,000 worth of updated communications equipment and software—about half of what is needed. However, much of the equipment could not be used in the current facilities given its limitations and a number issues related to the facility itself. Since the current call center operates in a small room in the county Sheriff's office, many of the issues that prevent more effective operation relate to the office's other uses—prison cells are located one floor up and inmates routinely cause the plumbing to back up and flood.

The $6.9 million price tag is an estimate given by CTA Architects Engineers, which includes all of the necessary infrastructure, land costs, consolidation expenses and contingency funds, computer and communications systems, backup systems, installation of modern venting to maintain the longevity of the equipment, and all other foreseeable costs.

However, Peck contends that the ballot's wording, "up to $6.9 million," means the cost to taxpayers would be modified to reflect the actual construction bids.

"That number has been given as a worst-case scenario," Peck said. "I think I can safely say that we're not going to spend that. Our goal is to spend less on it, but we didn't want to cut ourselves short and have to come back to the citizens."

Since the Flathead County Commissioners and city councils of Kalispell, Whitefish and Columbia Falls have all voted to merge 911 services and existing interlocal agreements require them to move forward with with the consolidation, the county's 911 board would go directly to those four governments to request money for the new center in the event that the bond fails.

Flathead Commissioner Joe Brenneman, who sits on the 911 board, said it is the board's intention "to make it happen, whether or not this bond passes."

Should voters approve the bond levy, construction could begin as early as next spring and should take only 10 to 12 months to complete.