Editorial: Soon, There Will be Four County Dispatch Centers for Summit County, Ohio

Feb. 01--A special committee charged by state law with planning how 9-1-1 calls should be handled in Summit County reaffirmed last week its intention to provide money from a special state fund to the five largest dispatching operations in this area. The money, collected from cell phone users, is intended to support centers that answer wireless calls for emergency services. State law rightly points toward consolidating wireless dispatching in no more than five centers per county. In two years, the maximum drops to four.

That worthy goal recently ran into a problem in the form of an opinion from Mike DeWine. The Ohio attorney general ruled that state law controls only funding. In other words, there is nothing to stop other dispatching operations (there are 12 total in Summit County) from handling wireless calls, provided they come up with their own money.

Some local chiefs in the northern tier of Summit County hailed the DeWine ruling as a victory. They argued that rerouting wireless calls from the five largest centers to their small departments would lead to dangerous delays and confusion. Actually, there is strong evidence that a dispatching center formed by Copley Township, Barberton and Norton is functioning effectively and efficiently.

The vote by the Summit County 9-1-1 Planning Committee, headed by Russ Pry, the county executive, should serve as a reminder to the chiefs that full consolidation of dispatching centers -- handing both wireless calls and those from land lines -- is both inevitable and desirable. Whatever victory the DeWine opinion represents, it is likely to be temporary.

Clearly, Gov. John Kasich and the Republican-controlled legislature have made plain their desire for consolidating local government operations. Even without political pressure, the high cost of running many dispatching centers, let alone many small police and fire departments, already has created financial pressures that will continue. Stow and Cuyahoga Falls, for example, now are talking about merging their dispatching centers.

The five largest centers are Akron, Cuyahoga Falls, Stow, the Summit County Sheriff's Office and the Copley-Barberton-Norton operation.

Rather than spending money from local taxpayers to keep their dispatching centers open, small departments in the county should get the message and redouble their efforts to merge their centers, before being forced by either the state or tight finances to do so. Once that happens, previous investments in small dispatching operations will become worthless.

In that context, the vote by the 9-1-1 planning committee really represents an opportunity to move forward toward consolidation. The eventual result should be four large dispatching centers that handle all calls for emergency services in Summit County.

That, in turn, should provide an opening for talks about merging police and fire departments themselves, sharing administrative costs to fund more first responders, more efficiently using expensive equipment such as fire trucks and more effectively using specialized units. That is the way to save money and at the same time provide better service to citizens.

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