Consolidating Tri-City 911 clears biggest hurdle yet

Emergency dispatchers in Richland will begin fielding 911 calls originating in Franklin County — eventually.

Consolidating 911 operations moved a step closer to reality Thursday when the Benton County Emergency Services Board approved plans to transition Franklin County dispatch services into its system.

Actual consolidation is likely a year or more away.

The plan will guide how Benton County absorbs dispatch responsibilities for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office and the Pasco Police and Fire Departments.

It is subject to approval by Benton County’s member agencies, including city councils, as well the Franklin County agencies. The deal will be presented to their respective boards in June.

The agreement is a big step toward a goal that has dogged emergency responders for nearly a decade: How to combine Benton and Franklin 911 operations to boost efficiency and to better serve residents who call for help from mobile phones.

“This has been a very painful process, but the people who think it is the right thing to do have stayed steadfast,” said Cindy Reents, Richland’s city manager and chair of the BCES board. “This is a big deal. This is a really, really big deal.”

The transition agreement lays out a process to bring Franklin County and the city of Pasco into the existing Southeast Communications Center 911 operation system. That system is owned by Benton County and the cities of Richland and Kennewick and serves the city of West Richland and rural fire districts through service contracts.

Franklin dispatchers will be interviewed for positions in Benton County and technological issues need to be addressed. Richand Police Chief Chris Skinner said the transition could take 18 months.

Franklin County and Pasco will pay all transition costs. Each will pay a $500,000 capital buy-in fee at the conclusion of the transition, which will make them co-owners of the system.

Franklin County Commissioner Brad Peck said he was encouraged by the forward momentum. The agreement validates the move to hire Steve Reinke, a Thorp-based expert in 911 dispatch operations, to aid its pursuit. Reinke sketched out a financial plan that included the $500,000 capital contribution.

Keith Johnson, Franklin County administrator, said the county is prepared to shoulder the transition costs, as well as the capital fee. The county has been banking the 911 fees paid by phone users to pay its dispatch expenses.

If it had been unable to reach an agreement with Benton County leaders, the funds could have been devoted to replacing their system. The deal means it can marshal those resources for the transition and not waste money updating an obsolete system or buying backup equipment that it won’t use.

He called the agreement a positive initial step, but cautioned that it will take time to reconcile technical issues and actually combine operations.

“We want to do this the right way. We want to do this methodically,” he said.

The move follows years of false starts. Leaders from both sides of the Columbia River long ago concluded the Tri-Cities would be better served by a single 911 dispatch center than separate ones in each county.

The Southeast Communications Center was the logical successor over Franklin’s aging system. The need grew more urgent as residents embraced mobile phones.

Calls from mobile devices are routed to the center nearest to the tower that picks up the call. As many as 5,000 Tri-City calls go to the wrong center annually. Misdirected calls have to be rerouted and are sometimes dropped, leading to minutes-long delays.

The deal makes provisions for smaller jurisdictions in Franklin County to join SECOMM as subscribers in the future, a move that would put them on the same footing as the city of West Richland and the county’s rural fire districts.

The city of Connell police and fire departments, Franklin County fire districts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, the Pasco Airport Police, North Franklin County Hospital Dispatch and Walla Walla Fire District 5 currently rely on Franklin County dispatch services.

This story was originally published May 11, 2017 at 6:12 PM with the headline "Consolidating Tri-City 911 clears biggest hurdle yet."