Report supports dispatch service consolidation

GETTING THE CALL: A report from Brown University’s Taubman Center recommends consolidating municipal 911 services across Rhode Island. Above, a 911 dispatcher works at the Scituate call center. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO
GETTING THE CALL: A report from Brown University’s Taubman Center recommends consolidating municipal 911 services across Rhode Island. Above, a 911 dispatcher works at the Scituate call center. / PBN PHOTO/MICHAEL SALERNO

Rhode Island boasts 39 cities and towns and 72 separate public-safety dispatches within its 1,200 square miles.
For some, the state’s intimate scale and small municipal entities are a source of pride. For others, regret.
For years, consolidating local-government functions has been a mantra among reformers looking to lower public-sector costs, even if most of those regionalization efforts have never gone anywhere. The number of individual emergency dispatches in Rhode Island and the prevalence of larger regional systems elsewhere in the country make dispatch a leading target of regionalization advocates in the Ocean State. Technological advances that started with the rise of mobile phones and are now stretching into text, data and video communication are now adding urgency to the push.
This fall, regionalization advocates were bolstered by a report from Brown University’s Taubman Center for Public Policy, which recommended consolidation after studying the issue for the General Assembly’s Joint Municipal Shared Services Study Commission.
“Our findings suggest that the state is at an important crossroads in emergency-services provision that stems from a significant change in 911 technology,” said the report, which lists five key contributors in Taubman’s Applied Social, Economic, and Regulatory Analysis Group. “For reasons explained throughout this document, we recommend that the state implement a form of horizontal consolidation.”
In recommending “horizontal consolidation,” the Taubman report advances a less-aggressive course of action than some would support. It would leave the central state call center as is and create regional centers.
The other alternative they studied, “vertical consolidation,” would involve cutting out an entire layer of what is now a three-step process connecting 911 callers with first responders.
But even this less-aggressive approach may be more than Rhode Island communities are able to make happen in the near future.
A group of municipalities in the northern part of the state has been exploring regional dispatch for years, but hasn’t gotten close to making it happen.
Cumberland Mayor and now Lt. Gov.-elect Daniel McKee, who has been at the forefront of that effort and campaigned to continue it at the statewide level, said finding adequate facilities for a regional dispatch have been a sticking point. “There is interest from municipal leaders I have worked with and there has been discussion for a few years, but it has not been able to be put together for various reasons,” McKee said in a phone interview. “I think facilities are important, and which buildings are going to work. And it is also a matter of making it a priority.”
McKee said communities that have pursued regional dispatch along with Cumberland include North Providence, Johnston, Lincoln, Pawtucket and Central Falls.
But Daniel Beardsley, executive director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, said union opposition, not finding a building, is the real problem standing in the way of regional dispatch.
“I think [dispatch projects] are stalemated and will remain so,” Beardsley said. “The biggest obstacle is the outright objection of statewide police and firefighters. I think there is interest in many communities, but no one wants to face that gorilla.”
Complicating the challenge of getting labor onboard through collective bargaining, Beardsley said, is dealing with multiple unions in each community and a mix of uniformed and civilian employees involved in dispatch.
In a letter to the Shared Municipal Services Committee responding to the Taubman report, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 94 listed regionalization concerns that included the loss of local knowledge, startup costs and changing technical standards.
“Council 94 cannot support a concept that is not fully fleshed out or adequately funded,” the letter said.
Perhaps to calm union fears about consolidation, Sen. Louis P. DiPalma, D-Middletown, co-chairman of the Shared Municipal Services Committee, said regionalization would likely not result in layoffs, but cost savings would come from long-term attrition.
“People are concerned with jobs, but the expectation is that over three to five years you would save money through attrition,” DiPalma said. “No one loses their job. When someone retires you don’t fill the position and that’s how you save money.”
Under the current system, all 911 calls are received by a central state dispatch in Scituate, which then forwards them to one of the 72 local police or fire dispatches in the state. The local dispatch then directs the appropriate first responders to the scene and transmits whatever relevant information is available. Part of the impetus behind consolidating now are the equipment upgrades at the central state call center that will allow it to receive text messages and other digital media through 911.
The 72 local dispatches don’t currently have this capability, the report said, and upgrading all or most of them to get it would be prohibitively expensive.
The “horizontal” consolidation recommended by the Taubman report would leave the central state call center as is, but combine an unidentified number of local dispatches into regional centers capable of taking information from the central dispatch and directing first responders.
The report does not make any suggestions on how large the regions should be or estimates on how much money creating the regional dispatches would cost or save.
The “vertical” consolidation model would involve breaking up the statewide dispatch and routing 911 calls directly to the new regional call centers, which would then communicate directly with first responders.
The Taubman report said by eliminating a layer in the information chain, the vertical model would likely save even more money in the long-term, but the upfront costs and disruption necessary to implement it appear unfeasible.
“While we predict that emergency-services dispatch could be more efficient under vertical consolidation, the transition to this model is prohibitively complex in the short-term,” the report said. “Until the technology matures, moving to a vertical model carries unnecessary risks in terms of sunk costs and call failures.”
It added that horizontal consolidation should allow a transition to vertical consolidation at a later date, should it become practical, at no extra capital cost.
To get the ball rolling on regional dispatch, DiPalma said he would like to see a pilot program established with funds in the upcoming state budget to assist an as-yet-unidentified group of interested communities test out a regional system.
A portion of what remains from the $230 million the state received as part of a 2012 U.S. Department of Justice settlement with Google could be a good source of funds for such a pilot program, DiPalma said. The federal government requires the money be spent on law enforcement capital projects. •

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