Officials who touted the advantages of creating a unified 911 system for Pierce County are moving from campaign mode to creation mode now that voters have approved the concept.
Their first priority is putting a radio network in place that complies with a looming federal mandate. The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and the region’s fire districts might face fines or experience widening gaps in radio coverage if they don’t upgrade their radios to comply with new standards taking effect Jan. 1, 2013.
“That’s priority one,” said Deputy County Executive Kevin Phelps, a member of the South Sound 911 steering committee. “We are in the middle of discussing how to accomplish that.”
The South Sound 911 steering committee also is working on other priorities, including officially forming the new agency and figuring out a detailed plan for merging three current dispatch centers.
“We all understand there is a lot of work to be done,” Phelps said last week.
Last month, Pierce County residents approved the South Sound 911 measure with more than 55 percent of the vote. The measure will raise the sales tax by a penny on every $10 purchase to provide money to help build a combined radio network and two new dispatch centers.
The county’s three largest dispatch centers – Law Enforcement Support Agency, Tacoma Communications and Pierce County Fire Comm – will merge and form the foundation for the new agency. The employees would be housed in new dispatch centers – one for police dispatchers and the other for fire and emergency medical dispatchers.
The County Executive’s Office and representatives from the county’s five largest police and fire agencies met for the past two years to come up with the South Sound 911 proposal. That group continues to meet on a weekly basis now that the measure has been passed.
Legal representatives from the agencies are working to officially create the new agency, Phelps said, and the committee is moving forward on several fronts, including:
• Notifying the state and retail stores about the sales-tax increase, which should take effect the first of April.
• Briefing the likely members of the agency’s policy board, which will be comprised of elected officials from Tacoma, Lakewood, Pierce County and West Pierce Fire & Rescue.
• Discussing whether the cities, county and fire districts can provide money to launch South Sound 911 before tax receipts start accruing. (While the tax would start in April, the first collections would not begin to fill the agency’s coffers until June, Phelps said.) The jurisdictions later would be reimbursed, Phelps said.
• Reviewing a plan to upgrade the radios for first responders by expanding the 700-megahertz system now used by Pierce Transit and upgrading the VHF radio system used by sheriff’s deputies and several Pierce County fire districts to make it compliant with the 2013 federal mandate. Proponents have said it would cost about $35 million to upgrade the radios.
The committee hasn’t started working on where to build the two new dispatch centers, which could cost $70 million. The process to design, site and build the centers is more likely to be done in the next 18 to 24 months.
Phelps said the steering committee hasn’t publicized its meetings yet because the new 911 agency hasn’t officially been formed and become a public entity. Once that is done, the meetings will be publicized.
“We are going to be very open about what we do,” Phelps said. “Right now, it is staff-level to staff-level meetings.”
Phelps said labor groups also would be brought in after the agency is formed to provide input while a detailed implementation plan is being developed.
“Each month we are going to make major progress toward this,” Phelps said. “We are real excited about it.”
Stacey Mulick: 253-597-8268
stacey.mulick@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/crime
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