By Sarah Favot, Lowell Sun (Massachusetts)

Public-safety officials and regional planners are looking at creating a single emergency communications center that will serve nine Greater Lowell communities, potentially saving each tens of thousands of dollars.

The Northern Middlesex Council of Governments has been preparing a feasibility study for several months, and will soon present a draft to its member communities — Billerica, Chelmsford, Dracut, Dunstable, Lowell, Pepperell, Tewksbury, Tyngsboro and Westford.

Beverly Woods, executive director of NMCOG, said communities are being asked whether they want to move forward, including determining how the center will be governed and where it will be built.

Lowell, Chelmsford and Tewksbury have expressed interest in moving forward, but Westford officials this week questioned the cost and feasibility, as well as the impact of loss of local control.

The state’s 911 Department is providing incentives for communities to regionalize.

Massachusetts, with a population of more than 6.5 million in an area of 7,800 square miles, has 269 dispatch centers. Maryland, with a population 5.7 million and an area covering 9,700 square miles, has 34 dispatch centers, according to NMCOG.

On the South Shore, Hull, Cohasset, Hingham and Norwell are undergoing a regionalization process, and communities in Essex County, Middlesex’s neighbor to the northwest, have also regionalized. Another regional center will be created at Devens, serving Devens, Harvard, Lancaster and Lunenburg.

The state will pay the cost of a new building, equipment and other expenses, but not the cost of the land, Woods said. Money will come from the 911 surcharge on cellphone bills.

Benefits for Lowell

Lowell officials said the center plan may have merit.

Deborah Friedl, a deputy police superintendent who has been working with consultants hired by NMCOG, said the only negatives seen so far are a loss of direct control with the dispatch center inside the department.

She said the city will save money because it will not have to update its dispatch center every 10 years. She said the latest renovation cost taxpayers $2 million.

“We see that this benefits, financially, the citizens of Lowell,” she said. “We don’t see that this will diminish our service delivery.”

Friedl said she understands how some communities may be resistant to the change, but she believes the communities will be able to design a center that will address every community’s concerns.

City Manager Bernie Lynch said he is interested in moving forward with regionalization. He plans to present the draft plan to the City Council this month.

“It seems to make sense,” he said. “If there’s an economy of scale in savings that can be realized, obviously that is very significant to every community right now, saving taxpayer dollars.”

Although Lowell only sees real savings if all nine communities sign on, he said the city will have to evaluate as more communities make their decisions.

Based on the state’s funding formula, which calculates population and call volume, communities will save the most if all nine sign on, ranging from a 40 percent estimated cost savings in Lowell’s dispatch budget to an 80 percent savings in Tyngsboro’s budget.

Woods said she is not expecting all nine communities to sign on.

Partial regionalization plans in the report show lower savings, with some communities saving nothing.

At last Tuesday night’s Westford Board of Selectmen meeting, Town Manager Jodi Ross, Police Chief Thomas McEnaney and Fire Chief Richard Rochon opposed the regional dispatch concept. They did not outright reject the plan, but asked for more time to review the NMCOG draft.

They said they are worried about delayed response times, possibly losing dispatchers with local knowledge, and a lack of financial incentive — issues also raised by Shirley officials when they opted out of the Devens dispatch center.

Westford’s concerns

McEnaney said he has worked with NMCOG on the issue.

“One of the major concerns that I do have is the possibility of it being a major disruption in call times for our community,” he said, due to calls being stacked in terms of priority within the entire region.

Woods said one of the findings in the report is that a single call center improves response times, especially in a community like Westford, because it has separate dispatchers for police and fire. Woods said medical calls to a police department have to be transferred to the fire department, which is an extra step.

Dracut and Billerica also operate separate police and fire dispatch centers, according to NMCOG.

Rochon said his concern with regionalization is that Westford would be supplementing services in other towns.

Westford Selectman Robert Jefferies said he has concerns that a dispatcher in a regionalized center would not know Westford or be familiar with its residents.

Chelmsford Police Chief James Murphy told The Sun he generally favors regionalization, but more work needs to be done on a specific plan.

He said he would want Chelmsford’s station to remain open 24 hours a day, so he would have to look at staffing the station at night.

Another option, according to Woods, is to have security cameras installed in the police station that could be monitored by dispatchers in a regional center.

Murphy said the town would have to weigh the benefits of cost savings with the technical aspects, such as sharing a records-management system and figuring out where the center is going to be located.

“Could it work? I think it could work, but again I want to look at it a lot closer,” he said.

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