Your dropped 911 call is about to be a thing of the past in the Tri-Cities

Tri-City cell phone users needing help will soon be able to call 911 without fear that their calls will be dropped.

Beginning Aug. 6, the Southeast Communications Center in Richland will field all emergency calls from Franklin County in addition to Benton County.

The move caps a decade-long effort to combine the two local dispatch operations. And officials say it will reduce the number of dropped calls and means help should arrive faster.

The Franklin County Commission gave final approval Tuesday to a complex deal that ends dispatch operations on the north side of the Columbia River.

Benton County and the cities of Kennewick, Pasco, Richland and West Richland, among others, are expected to give their approvals in the coming weeks.

Consolidating dispatchers into a single center, called SECOMM, will help solve the challenge posed by widespread use of mobile phones.

Cell phone calls are rerouted through towers to the dispatch center nearest the tower, not the caller.

In the Tri-Cities, which has dispatch centers on both sides of the Columbia, thousands of calls were sent to the wrong center each year.

When that happens, dispatchers have to reroute the calls across the river, some invariably getting dropped. Response times suffered.

The number of misdirected calls should drop when SECOMM takes over for the region, said Keith Johnson, Franklin County administrator.

Mobile phones aren't the only issue.

Franklin County's dispatch equipment is nearly obsolete and is no longer supported by software companies or compatible with the records systems of the agencies it serves.

Without consolidation, Franklin County would have had to invest in a costly upgrade, a move that could have delayed the eventual goal of consolidation.

The county once planned to retain its dispatch center as a backup for emergencies. Now, it hopes to sell it for parts.

"Ours is too antiquated there's no point in trying to resuscitate it," Johnson said. If possible, it will find another agency that still uses that equipment.

Franklin County's eight dispatchers were offered positions at SECOMM and most accepted, Johnson said.

The changeover should be invisible to users and will not affect the 911 fees that Franklin County residents pay as part of their phone bills. The fees are assessed on both landlines and mobile phones.

Under the consolidation agreement, Franklin County and the city of Pasco will pay a combined $1 million fee to join the agency as voting partners rather than subscribers. That status was a point of contention between Benton and Franklin county officials.

Benton County Commissioner Jim Beaver wanted Franklin and Pasco to sign on as fee-paying subscribers like West Richland. But those agencies wanted the protection of being voting members.

Brad Peck, Franklin County chairman, said the consolidation agreement is far from perfect. But he called it a long overdue solution to a problem that could have affected public safety.

"It's about what's in the best interest of the people of Franklin County," he said.

This story was originally published June 5, 2018 at 4:54 PM with the headline "Your dropped 911 call is about to be a thing of the past in the Tri-Cities."