The Daviess County Fiscal Court has decided it’s time to take a hard look at the consolidated 911 dispatch office that serves both the City of Owensboro and Daviess County. They voted Thursday to give a termination notice for the agreement concerning the consolidated dispatch office, which outlines the funding mechanisms for the operations.
While the City and County originally intended to build a new 911 Emergency Operations Center, there were not enough funds at the time. Instead, they consolidated the operations at the Owensboro Police Department in 2009.
The governments approved the current agreement regarding the center’s operations and funding in 2019.
Under the current agreement, the center’s operations costs are split between the City and County based on each entity’s incident rate. According to the language of the 2019 agreement, the City covers 73% of the operating costs with the County paying for the other 23%.
According to Daviess County Treasurer Jordan Johnson, Fiscal Court decided to terminate the agreement to make way for a holistic review and potentially new agreement.
“It’s an old agreement,” Johnson said. “We definitely need to look at whether CAD volume is a fair allocation of cost. It may very well be, or the difference may be so low that we don’t care. We just need to review.”
In addition to reviewing the funding agreement, parties involved are taking the termination as a chance to improve the dispatch center and its operation.
Daviess County Sheriff Brad Youngman noted some of the challenges that he hopes to address.
“(There is) a lot of turnover and a lot of vacancies in their manpower, from year to year,” Youngman said. “The result of that, oftentimes, is that when one of my deputies gets on the radio and needs to speak with a dispatcher, the dispatchers are busy.”
According to the Journal of Emergency Dispatch, this is a national trend with 911 dispatching as an industry having one of the highest turnover rates. Dispatchers often suffer from high stress and PTSD as a result of their job, according to the Journal.
Central County Commissioner Larry Conder said he hopes communication between departments improves.
“There are some of the dual agencies that could probably work better together supporting each other, whether it be the Owensboro Police Department, Sheriff’s Department, or other departments the City or County has,” Conder said.
West County Commissioner Chris Castlen said that, ultimately, all of this is being done in the name of public safety.
“Anything that goes along with our 911 system, it’s about what’s best for public safety,” Castlen said. “We want to make sure that changes occur that are better for the public.”
