On Monday, the Hollister City Council will vote on whether to
contract with Santa Cruz Regional 911 for emergency dispatch
services.
On Monday, the Hollister City Council was set to vote on whether to contract with Santa Cruz Regional 911 for emergency dispatch services.
A communications center’s handling of any individual incident – or the ultimate outcome – cannot be guaranteed, as each case is unique to some degree. Every communications center has its successes and its failures, but when it comes to handling thousands of incidents, one can draw some conclusions.
Reviewing the overall capabilities of the San Benito Communications Center and its local advantages against the overall capabilities of the Santa Cruz Regional 911 and its advantages of scale, it appears that the neighboring facility has a slight overall edge in overall performance.
A significant advantage is that Santa Cruz has fully implemented Emergency Medical Dispatching, EMD, which has immediate lifesaving potential because dispatchers can give critical medical advice. EMD also includes special quality assurance and analysis programs to improve performance as reflected in their Annual Report. Small systems like the one in San Benito County have difficulty coming up with the staffing and budgets required to implement these programs. Santa Cruz also has 28 percent of its operators with bilingual Spanish qualifications, while San Benito County has none and uses a translator service.
The most compelling argument for maintaining the current system is local control. “My preference is to maintain the system locally,” said Sheriff Darren Thompson.
He has experience with both options having worked in Watsonville before and after its consolidation with Santa Cruz. He also added, though, that once the initial problems were ironed out, “the consolidation worked satisfactorily.”
On the financial side, the sheriff is concerned that the consolidation might leave the department without sufficient staffing to maintain the capability to physically verify warrants for officers in the field around the clock – a legal requirement – or to make law enforcement computer entries during regular business hours. The job of warrant verification will likely go to the jail because it is manned 24/7; and some added staffing will probably be necessary.
Beth Kafer, county communications manager, also focused on the possible loss of personalized and familiar service. “The local communications center and local agencies are used to working closely together and understand each other well,” she said. “When someone from the public comes to the window they also like to see a familiar face, someone they are comfortable with.”
However, those issues are not the driving force behind this consideration. Even if one assumes that all operational factors were approximately equal, the impetus for change is the forecasted savings, especially for the City of Hollister. After fronting about $300,000 for the transition capital that will be paid back with the first two years’ savings, the city stands to save a little over $200,000 a year even after contributing to some increase in personnel expenses at the sheriff’s department to offset those lost capabilities. After deducting similar cost offsets, the county stands to save $60,000 a year after year two. Savings of $260,000 a year for the county taxpayers for three years is at $780,000. Those savings will also flow into the future proportionally.
The city is currently looking at a significant budget deficit in two years; hence, if they fail to realize the savings its deficit will increase between 5 percent and 10 percent just from the costs of maintaining the communications center.
This proposal is one of the few where the county and city have the opportunity to maintain an essential service while reducing costs – and that is a hard trick to pull off.
If it is not implemented, the only other alternative will be to actually cut services to offset the high unit costs of our small operation.Â
Marty Richman is a Hollister resident.
Monday’s council meeting is set for 6:30 p.m. at Hollister City Hall, 375 Fifth St.
