Fox Lake to keep 911 setup

After almost a year of arguments, closed-door meetings and number-crunching, Fox Lake officials have decided to hang on to their emergency dispatch center.

Mayor Cindy Irwin and trustees had talked about a merger with Round Lake's CenCom to help offset the $1 million annual cost to operate the center. The village budget is about $500,000 in the red and officials are looking for places to save.

But, Irwin said after carefully reviewing the center's costs, she decided the village could support it if current contracts are rewritten and other clients are brought in.

"This is what is best for the village of Fox Lake," she said. "If the contracts are rewritten and we bring in a few more agencies, we can make it happen."

Many Lake County officials would tend to agree. They say it would take too much retraining and preparation to merge dispatch services.

Others, however, say merging is the best way to save taxpayers' money and ensure the quickest response to an emergency.

"Consolidation has its pros and cons," said Brian Tegtmeyer, executive director of DuPage Public Safety Communications -- DuComm -- the largest dispatch center in the state.

Different protocols

When someone calls 911, that call goes to a dispatcher who sends out the appropriate emergency responders. Under the central dispatching plan, one group of dispatchers takes calls for several different departments.

In Fox Lake, those calls go to FoxComm. The $1 million facility opened in the Fox Lake Public Safety Building three years ago. It serves Fox Lake and Grayslake police and fire departments.

Consolidating dispatch operations isn't as simple as moving people or rerouting 911 calls to a central location. Different departments use different codes and protocols, authorities said. Dispatchers spend months in training and retraining and they have to know the codes to react quickly in an emergency.

While getting everyone working on the same page may be difficult, it can be done, said DuComm's Tegtmeyer.

DuComm -- DuPage Public Safety Communications -- was formed in 1975 and is now the largest 911 center in Illinois, serving 27 agencies and 700,000 residents. It employs 70 dispatchers.

Tegtmeyer said communication between agencies is the key to making a larger center work and that each agency looking to join needs to review the advantages and disadvantages of being a part of a larger group.

"I think we are a model agency that works extremely well for its members," he said. "I think we've proven a large group of agencies can get together and work it out."

Annette Wolf, head of the FoxComm dispatching in Fox Lake, said there already is a form of central dispatching in place in Lake County for major incidents. The Mutual Aid Box Alarm System, run out of CenCom in Round Lake, uses one central frequency so departments can talk to each other during a major emergency, like a tornado or large fire.

Departments only use MABAS when there is a major emergency involving multiple departments over county lines. When it comes to smaller, everyday calls, protocols vary from department to department.

"All of those different agencies going into the one central center would need to adapt to one way of doing things," Wolf said.

"Financially, it could be a good thing if planned out properly and all the agencies got on board," she said. "But, it would take a lot of planning to make it happen."

Saving money

Experts said the savings come when all departments in one central system pitch in to cover personnel costs and upgrading expensive equipment -- like radio networks and computers -- to keep centers up-to-date.

Schaumburg Village Manager Ken Fritz said his village was duplicating services with neighboring villages prior to joining Northwest Central Dispatch about a year ago.

Fritz said the hookup to Northwest Central Dispatch was seamless, as the village's dispatch computers first were linked to Northwest Central. After the link was made, dispatchers who chose to remain on moved to the new dispatch center.

He said the village's own dispatch area remains in use with non-emergency village operators; for public works crews, for example.

He said Schaumburg saved about $800,000 a year, but still has the expertise in running a dispatch center.

"In the long run, as we work together as communities, it will become more of a seamless transition and a benefit to all communities," he said.

The future

In Fox Lake alone, officials estimated they could have saved about $350,000 a year on dispatching services by merging with CenCom. But they've instead decided to erase their deficit by restructuring their 911 contract with Grayslake, which currently pays the village about $380,000 a year for dispatch services.

Officials also voted to stopped paying for garbage collection, instead passing the full cost on to residents. And other cuts were made in various village departments. The total saving is about $300,000 a year.

Still, some officials aren't ruling out a dispatch center merger in the future. With villages all over Lake County trying to save money, it might make sense to review consolidation in the coming years, said Fox Lake Fire Chief Ron Hoehne.

"One of the hopes in the past was that there would be a central fire dispatching center at some point," he said. "But, at the same time, there are a lot of issues that would need to be resolved."

Kent McKenzie, head of the Lake County Emergency Management Agency, said he hopes Lake County police and fire departments will continue to explore consolidation down the road.

"In terms to practicality of unified dispatch, it really cuts out extraneous links in the chain of communication during major incidents," he said. "There are a lot of things that need to be researched though before something like this could be considered."

He said cost and training of dispatchers, the ability to integrate all systems plus the purchase of newer radios and equipment for the central dispatching system, are all areas that need to be looked at before any decisions are made.

"Telecommunications is a service to the public and the agencies that are served," McKenzie said. "If all of these departments are doing similar things, it makes sense to consolidate."