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Council Communication

Title:	Potential Consolidation of the Ashland Police Department 911/Dispatch Center
Dept:	Police
Date:	September 17, 2002
Submitted By:	Scott Fleuter, Chief of Police
Reviewed By: ........................	Greg Scoles, City Administrator

Synopsis:	Mayor and Council have received several documents over the past few months in regard to the potential for 911/dispatch consolidation. These documents have been attached to this communication for reference. The main issue is whether to maintain the current 911/Dispatch center at the Ashland Police Department, or have service provided by either Southern Oregon Regional Communications or the Medford Police Department.
Recommendation:	Any of the above three options would provide adequate service to the city. The State has made it clear that only one center in Jackson County will receive all 911 dollars. It is also clear that as the workload increases at the Ashland Center, there will be a need to add more dispatchers. Regardless of the loss of 911 dollars and the additional dispatchers, staff believes there would still be a significant cost savings to the City of Ashland if an outside agency provided service. Based on this, staff recommends that the Council determine that 911/dispatch services should be provided by either SORC or Medford, and direct staff to bring back a preferred consolidation alternative for council consideration.
Fiscal Impact:	The City of Ashland budget could be reduced nearly $400,000 a year by opting to use an outside agency for 911/Dispatch services. Please refer to the attached memorandum entitled "staff analysis of 911/Dispatch proposals" (June 24, 2002) for details. The table at the end of the memo summarizes the breakdown of the costs for the various altematives.
Background:	The attached documents provide extensive background on the 911-consolidation issue in Jackson County.

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Summary Table

1. Current program expense or contract expense if out-sourced.
2. Additonal cost to maintain Ashland PSAP.
3. Additonal 2.0 FTE to provide service level comparable to out-sourced proposals.
4. Ashland 1.0 FTE included in operational costs that is retained if PS^P out-sourced.
5. Ashland expenses included in operational costs that are retained if PSAP outsourced.
6. Current state revenue that would be lost if Ashland did not consolidate.
7. Current revenue that may be lost with consolidation.

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