Montgomery County Regional Dispatch Center: A little history on Ohio 911 center that shut down on its second day of operation.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOvecK90ZGE&hl=en&fs=1]
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office web page on Regional Dispatch Center
Dayton agrees to be part of Regional Dispatch Center
City of Kettering deliberations on the Regional Dispatch Center
Click here for our previous coverage
We took a quick look around the Internet for a little background on the very unusual story about the Montgomery County, Ohio regional 911 center that closed the day after it opened. Montgomery County Sheriff Phil Plummer leads the efforts to correct computer problems that came to light after a fire dispatch was delayed for as long as 15-minutes. At least one call-taker faces disciplinary action over the call.
The video above was used to promote the idea of the Regional Dispatch Center. There also links to earlier documents from two jurisdictions, the cities of Dayton and Kettering. Dayton joined the efforts. Kettering ultimately did not.
Below are excerpts from the Dayton Daily News article by Valryn Warren that ran Wednesday, on the eve of the center’s opening:
Miamisburg Mayor Dick Church said Montgomery County worked hard to create the kind of regional dispatch center it was asked to provide at the lowest possible cost.
“I really think this is the way to go,” Church said. “And I personally think that within 10 years, the rest of the county will be members, too.”
The center, at 460 Vantage Point in Miamisburg’s Mound Advanced Technology Center, will open Thursday, March 26, serving 19 police departments and 12 fire departments.
The center will employ about 87 people, 75 of them dispatchers, have an estimated annual budget of about $7.4 million in 2010 and $8.2 million from 2011-13, and handle more than 700,000 calls (including nonbillable administrative and internal sheriff’s office communications) a year.
It will cost considerably more per call than originally estimated in 2006, when the cost of a regional dispatch center was first studied. The estimated cost back then was $6.65 a call the first year, with three percent increases each of the next two years.
The final rate structure reached this week is $9.26 this year, $9.50 in 2010 and an estimated $12.50 in 2011. But many of the original assumptions changed, too.
Several larger cities with dispatch centers, including Kettering and Huber Heights, opted not to join, which decreased projected revenues.
