Wayne County Dispatching Center & Costs Create Controversy
By STEVEN F. HUSZAI, Daily Record (Wooster, Ohio)
WOOSTER — As governments of all shapes and sizes try to do more with less, dispatching service in Wayne County was the first nut officials tried to crack.
Early in the year, the talk was of consolidating dispatching between Wayne and Ashland counties. But those negotiations never gained much momentum.
The communications center located in the basement of the Justice Center in Wooster saw a change in its funding methodology in attempts by the commissioners to make it a more sustainable system.
The commissioners maintained they wanted to match the dollars with who actually received services, since some communities receive dispatching through Orrville and Rittman’s PSAPs. They also pointed out villages didn’t pay their fair share, but instead a small portion of equipment costs.
The cost to operate the Wooster PSAP is about $933,000 annually, and Wooster and Wayne County pay 97 percent of that amount, $905,000, according to a chart shared with the chiefs by Commissioner Scott Wiggam. The other agencies combined pay for the remaining 3 percent, which is nearly $27,900.
Village and township chiefs and officials said the plan amounted to taxing residents in incorporated areas twice for the same service and pleaded for alternative funding sources.
In August, the county sent letters with new amounts to be charged for dispatching for the 16 entities that received services through the Justice Center. Every entity saw the annual amounts increase, some more substantially than others.
All of the police chiefs in the Wayne County system requested a meeting with the commissioners to discuss the issues in greater detail. Chiefs Chuck Ellis (Smithville), Jason Woodruff (Apple Creek), Bryon Meshew (Creston), Tom Rocker (Marshallville), John Foster (Mount Eaton), Ron Kiner (Shreve) and Don Sims (West Salem) put their names on the letter expressing concerns to the commissioners.
Of concern are what constitutes a “call for service,” officer safety and quality issues, price increases and more.
Later, the fire chiefs joined in a second meeting with the police chiefs.
“All of us agree we were not paying our fair share,” Meshew said. “I am not down playing the need for having dispatch, but when they make references to calls for service, which is yet undefined … that’s what raised eyebrows for the village chiefs.”
After the meetings, instead of the 25 percent of actual costs, Commissioners Wiggam, Jim Carmichael and Ann Obrecht agreed to charge the outside agencies 18 percent of the cost or the current invoice amount, whichever is greater. The amounts were included in two-year renewal contracts sent to the municipalities as the contracts ended at theof 2012.
“I will say that cost is favorable,” Smithville Mayor Allen Snyder said of the new figure for the village. “But I have a council that’s really uneasy about this … and has concerns about what happens at theof this two years.”
Snyder and others feared the commissioners ultimately were trying to get costs in line with figures proposed in the Cleveland State University study that explained consolidating dispatching centers.
“The stumbling block for us,” the mayor continued, “is if we go with the two-year extension we could lose our spot at another center, and then we have nowhere to go.”
Smithville decided it would jump ship to Orrville’s dispatching center for services. All other entities (except for Canaan Township trustees), despite the bickering and reluctance, signed on for another two years with the commissioners, who have pledged to fix problems regarding services related to the communications center.
“If we can work together and save money, it is a good thing,” Wiggam said. “This is not a county-wide function. Some entities are serving residents outside of Wayne County.”
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