Middletown, the county’s second-largest city, dispatched 50,998 emergency calls last year, and Police Chief Rodney Muterspaw said they can’t close.
“We are not volunteering to give ours up at this time,” the chief said. “We are too big, too busy and we need our dispatch at this place and time. Financially, we do not save any money at this point by giving up dispatch.”
With the Butler County Sheriff’s dispatch operation, there are four primary 911 centers locally.
The closure debate centers around a law passed in 2012. It said jurisdictions with multiple Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) had to shave down their 911 centers to four in 2016 and three in 2018, or risk losing half its wireless 911 and Next Generation 911 state funding, which amounts to about $400,000 annually. Larger jurisdictions must get down to four PSAPs.
State has ‘the hammer’
“That’s the hammer that they use. If you don’t meet all their requirements, then they withhold money,” Capt. Matt Franke, who serves as Butler County 911 coordinator, said.
Technically, Butler County had a total of nine dispatch centers, including the county, Fairfield, Middletown and West Chester Twp., before Hamilton and Oxford gave theirs up. The centers in Monroe, Trenton and Miami University are secondary dispatch centers that don’t receive calls directly from the 911 system and, therefore, are not counted toward the total.
Butler County received $716,484 from the 911 tariff in 2016, which is down from about $850,000 in years past. Franke said 40 percent of that money goes toward the day-to-day operations of the system and roughly 60 percent can be doled out to the other centers to reimburse approved expenses, like equipment replacement.
At the end of last year, the operating fund bottom line was $933,413 and the capital fund totalled $1.9 million. Franke said they are due for a system upgrade in a couple years that will be funded with the capital dollars.
Franke said the local jurisdictions haven’t received funds per se in recent years because the county buys equipment for everybody. They used some of that 60 percent pot of money for the mergers with Hamilton and Oxford.
The process of getting down to three centers isn’t as cut and dried as it appears. So far Franke said no one has volunteered to give up their center, and part of that could be because of a recent attorney general’s opinion on the matter.
‘Fluid situation’ causes hesitation
“No one has stepped up at this point, and I think part of it is this fluid situation in Columbus,” he said. “There was an AG opinion out on funding which is similar to previous AG opinions, where they said it (consolidation) only pertains to the funding. So you can have as many PSAPs as you want, you just can’t fund them all.”
However, in the past when the attorney general has issued opinions, Franke said the legislature would circle back around and “close the loophole” the opinions created.
“This is just the latest one (AG opinion), and I think some people are trying to see if this one is going to hold or not hold or whatever,” Franke said. “The way this has been over the years, I don’t think anyone is overly anxious because they think if they make a decision now it could change by the time the budget bill goes through and other possible legislation that could go through… There has not seemed to be any inclination at all in the legislature to back off of this.”
Gov. John Kasich’s proposed biennial budget released in January showed local 911 funding would remain flat at $25.7 million, despite the consolidation requirement, but state officials said this does not signal a softening of the mandate.
Fairfield Police Chief Mike Dickey said he sees the 911 call-taking and dispatch centers as two separate issues. He said his dispatchers perform a number of duties other than answering emergency calls, and he can’t afford to lose that manpower.
“If we did away with our dispatch operation, I’ve still got to figure out how I am going to handle this other stuff, because I do not have enough people to do that,” Dickey said. “… I see 911 as separate from the dispatch operations. We would like to keep our dispatch operations. I fully realize the 911 system has to be addressed, but there are a lot of ways to handle it.”
Local dispatch provides benefits
West Chester Twp. officials say they haven’t changed their stance on the issue. Last summer Township Administrator Judi Boyko said they did an internal cost/benefits study, which was a little difficult because they didn’t know exactly how much the county would charge them to contract for the service.
“I don’t believe from an operational standpoint the staff has changed its perspective about the most productive and effective way to dispatch West Chester’s safety services,” she said. “We have a local police department, local fire department and there is benefit for West Chester to maintain a local emergency dispatch presence.”
There is a cost to the communities when they turn their 911 calls over to the sheriff, but two jurisdictions that already merged also saw a savings.
One of the driving forces behind Hamilton turning its dispatching over to the county in 2014 was money. The city faced a $5 million budget deficit, and officials estimated they would save about $500,000 a year despite paying the sheriff's office about $900,000 for the service.
When the last state consolidation deadline came in 2015 — the county had to be down to four last year — Oxford stepped up. Officials in the college town estimated a $50,000 savings because they kept a number of dispatch center employees and expanded their duties. The city will pay the sheriff $352,800 this year and $370,440 in 2018.
Franke said it takes six to nine months to fully complete a takeover of dispatch services but they effectively met the deadline with Oxford — although the decision wasn’t made until three months before the deadline — because the city stopped taking the 911 calls in January. The full merger wasn’t realized until March of last year.
Butler County Commissioner Don Dixon, who is the chairman of the 911 planning committee, said the county will get down to three 911 centers this year, period, because they cannot afford to lose the state funding.
Dixon said the number of 911 calls each center handles is one main consideration. Last year, Middletown answered the most emergency calls with 50,998, Fairfield and West Chester received 28,139 and 26,729, respectively. The county dispatch center took 111,801 calls for a total of 217,667.
Dixon said he believes there is room for negotiation in the process of choosing which jurisdiction will be the one to go, and he doesn’t expect a huge “fight.”
“There will have to be some incentives, some guarantees,” he said. “I don’t want to get into what those might be or what that might look like, but I think there’s going to have to be some consideration to whomever goes out. I think we’ll get there.”
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