Tri-City 911 consolidation remains elusive

Work to unite Tri-City 911 dispatch operations remains on hold years after the subject was first raised.

Combining Benton and Franklin counties’ emergency dispatch operations would eliminate issues with dropped and misrouted 911 calls from mobile phones, which can lead to minutes-long delays responding to emergencies.

Mobile calls plague the dispatch centers.

Calls are directed to the center nearest the tower that picks up the call. In the Tri-Cities, where just a few miles separate the two centers, as many as 5,000 calls a year go astray.

“That’s a significant number of calls a year,” said Pasco Fire Chief Bob Gear. “When you have two answering points as close as ours, more and more phone calls are going to go to the wrong dispatch center.”

Little progress was made this week during a gathering of the Multi-Agency Three Rivers Information and Communications Services (MATRICS) steering committee.

The committee, which includes the city managers of Richland, Kennewick and Pasco, and Benton County Commissioner Jerome Delvin and Franklin County Commissioner Brad Peck, met briefly. They then adjourned with no firm plan to proceed.

“I don’t know that anything seems to be happening. They keep meeting but nothing seems to be happening,” observed Gear, a strong advocate for combining Franklin County’s system with the Southeast Communications Center in Richland.

He said the problem will worsen as mobile phones replace landlines. He estimates 5 percent of calls are sent to the wrong dispatch center.

When a call arrives at the wrong dispatch center, it is rerouted by landline to the proper destination. Calls have been dropped and information mangled in the transfer, Gear said.

“Consolidation needs to happen soon,” he said.

A separate issue with incompatible radios has been solved. Franklin County received a $623,000 federal grant to equip its sheriff’s department and other agencies with 800 MHz radios, so all Tri-City law enforcement can now communicate.

Benton County and Kennewick have agreed to interlocal agreements outlining the regional 911 approach, but no formal agreement will happen until key questions are answered:

▪  Will Franklin County and the city of Pasco sign on as full-fledged co-owners of SECOMM?

▪  Or will they be subscribers, like the city of West Richland and Benton County fire districts 1, 2 and 4?

Federal grants helped create SECOMM, but Benton, Kennewick and Richland made sizable investments as well, and they control its board. Franklin County and Pasco would have to make financial contributions to become owners.

Delvin said it would be straightforward for the two agencies to subscribe. They would need to write a letter to the communications center board asking to join.

As subscribers, they would each get one vote on the board and pay fees based on call volumes and the number of radios they have. The SECOMM center alone receives 28,000 emergency calls a month.

As owners, Benton County, Kennewick and Richland each have two votes on the independent board.

Franklin County and Pasco officials said they would prefer to become full members.

Peck, who represents Franklin County on the steering committee, acknowledged tight budgets could hinder the county from taking an ownership stake.

“We may need to look closely at a subscriber relationship as an interim measure to keep the process moving forward to full partnership later on,” he said.

Officials say that there’s no disagreement that combining 911 operations makes sense for the Tri-Cities. Misrouted calls can delay response times by as much as 10 minutes — an unacceptable amount in emergencies, say officials.

Peck and Franklin County Sheriff Jim Raymond said their end goal is a fully consolidated, independent dispatch center that includes the 18 or so dispatchers who work in Franklin County. The Franklin County center would be mothballed or potentially held in “warm” reserve as a backup facility.

“It would be foolish not to look to those people to staff the newly consolidated facility,” Peck said.

Tri-City police and fire chiefs say delaying consolidation is akin to delaying a response to an emergency.

“Any delay impacts those in harm’s way. That’s why we use lights and sirens. That’s why we control intersections,” said Kennewick Police Chief Vince Beasley.

“If we can pull this thing off and cut down on any delays or potential delays, that will be a good thing.”

This story was originally published February 12, 2016 at 5:25 PM with the headline "Tri-City 911 consolidation remains elusive."