For Ingham County, the question is whether or not less is more for emergency dispatch centers.
County commissioners are considering merging Ingham County's two 911 centers after a recent independent study showed the potential cost effectiveness of having one emergency dispatch center for the entire county.
If the two centers merge, concerns from local police include quality of service diminishing, lack of a contingency during a power failure and what will happen to employees within the two centers.
The county is concerned about funding without raising taxes.
Ingham County contains two dispatch centers: one in Lansing and the other in East Lansing. The East Lansing center responds to calls from its area, which includes MSU and Meridian Township, leaving the Lansing center responsible for the rest of the county.
The two centers have different systems, MSU police Chief Jim Dunlap said. In Lansing, calls are received by an operator and sent to a dispatcher, who notifies emergency personnel, he said. The operator and dispatcher are a combined position in East Lansing, and the individual taking the call will also notify emergency agencies, he said.
Using only the person who takes the calls sometimes gives a better idea of the urgency, Dunlap said.
East Lansing police Lt. Tom Vanderwoude said personnel is a huge issue in the proposal, and it means placing people in the new center as well as recreating their contracts to reflect their employment by the county.
"We provide a high level of service and want to maintain that level of service to the community and agencies we serve," Vanderwoude said. "There's a lot that has to be done to make this happen."
The East Lansing 911 dispatch center also requires workers to be familiar with the area and local events, such as MSU's Welcome Weekend, Dunlap said. In a single center with about 70 people dealing with 911 calls from different jurisdictions, quick assistance might be hard to manage, he said.
Ingham County Deputy Controller John Neilsen said the proposal's central issue is trying to strike a balance between conserving funds and maintaining a high quality of service to the community.
The county reimburses the centers for 95 percent of their budgets through mileage and the surcharges when people call 911, Neilsen said. But expenditures are increasing higher than revenues, and without action the county might be forced to either raise taxes or ask the centers to pay for more than 5 percent of their budgets, Neilsen said.
According to estimates done in the study, over the first 10 years of operation, about $5.8 million could be saved with one center.
The 911 Advisory Committee, which will review the proposal, doesn't have a deadline but could possibly produce a plan in about three to six months, Neilsen said.
