Proposed South Sound 911 center: ‘We’re not building a Taj Mahal’

Suppose you’re a government official, trying to convince hardened skeptics you’re not pulling a con.

That’s the job at the moment for Andrew Neiditz, executive director of South Sound 911, the biggest emergency communications outfit in the county.

He intends to close a deal Pierce County voters approved five years ago. The $62 million plan envisions an emergency communications center in Tacoma’s Lincoln District that would serve 41 police and fire agencies.

“We’ve been holding a series of public meetings,” he said in a recent interview. “There’s a lot of questions about why we’re doing what we’re doing.”

Neiditz, a former Lakewood city manager and deputy county executive, faces another degree of difficulty: a season of public discontent, complicated by unrelated, controversial and aborted public projects, such as a methanol refinery or a county administration building.

The trick for Neiditz is explaining that the South Sound 911 proposal isn’t like those disfavored projects. It’s a different animal: already vetted, already funded by voters through a 0.1 percent sales tax increase.

All that remains is closing — and much of that hinges on assessing the suitability of a proposed site at 3602 Pacific Ave. The deal on the table involves moving parts, and it’s not finished.

Here’s the short description:

▪ The Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department and the county’s Community Connections department, which handles social services, would move out of their current digs on the site and relocate across the street.

▪ The building those agencies occupy would be demolished, along with the neighboring, shuttered Puget Sound Hospital.

▪ The South Sound 911 communications center would rise in place of the old health department structure.

The News Tribune recently spoke to Neiditz about the project and the challenges associated with it. Here’s an edited transcript of the discussion.

Q: This project has evolved since voters originally approved it in 2011. You’re getting lots of questions about money, and you say the costs are lower in the new scenario. Can you explain?

A: The original plan was in excess of $100 million.

We’re not building a Taj Mahal, and we’re not building a palace, and we’re not wasting taxpayers’ money. What we’re doing is pretty responsible and acceptable to the police agencies and the fire agencies that have to support this building.

Q: What are the biggest questions you get from critics?

A: There were issues about why are we spending more money than we said we would, which is totally not true.

Part of the rationale is to save perhaps as much as $10 million, because with the high security standards, the per-square-foot construction cost is so high. The progression of costs has gone down, from the mid-$80s, $70s, $60s. If we do this right, we can lower it below $60 (million).

Q: You’ve heard critics say it’s just a glorified call center. What’s wrong with that perception?

A: This is not a call center. We could rent a Kmart and have a call center. The work that we do is probably more similar to air traffic controllers.

There’s a lot of technology. There’s a lot of critically important life-and-death situations on the phone. You have a need to coordinate with the radio.

Q: Pierce County is helping to finance this proposal, though South Sound 911 is a separate entity. Could you explain that?

A: We’re not really a government per se. We have no taxing authority. We can’t sell bonds, so the county’s doing it for us.

Q: At the same time, you make a regular point of saying South Sound 911 is not an arm of Pierce County government. Why is it so important to say that?

A: I was a deputy county executive for eight years. I’ve worked in several cities. I understand the biases county people have about cities and vice versa. I know what people say about each other because I’ve been in both places.

One of the successful premises of South Sound 911 was that it was going to be a regional entity that would be established by several agencies but beholden to not one. I have six government owners, and even though some may be bigger than the others, they’re all, in my mind, equally important. My goal is to keep them all in a collaborative mode.

If there’s a perception that we’re a county department, the noncounty players will feel like they’re not getting what they need. Similarly, if I started catering every day to what the city of Tacoma needed, I’m sure all the non-Tacoma players would wonder why I’m doing that.

Q: Why is it important to have all these dispatch functions under a single roof?

A: To me, the most glaring example, and perhaps this sounds melodramatic, is 9/11. Hundreds of New York firefighters died because there was no communication or interoperability.

All 41 of these public safety agencies should be able to easily communicate. We answer about 2,600 calls a day. Some of them are insignificant, some of them are very important, but they’re all 911 calls.

You have a lot of situations where people may have to repeat their location or situation. If your loved one is not breathing, the last thing in the world you want to do is say it more than once.

The goal of moving people together is not just to build a new building. It is to create an interoperability enterprise where people can even shout across a room.

Q: You have people asking why this facility should be in metro Tacoma, instead of somewhere else where the costs might be cheaper. Your two boards (policy and operations) have set boundaries within the Tacoma area. Why limit the possible locations?

A: The board felt centralizing was better. By having a unified facility, the cost lowered in the neighborhood of $10 million as well.

(For some critics) the issue very clearly was the site-selection process, that this was done for the convenience of police and fire people. I’ve heard the word “Tacoma-centric” in a negative context. Tacoma’s police and fire departments are two of our largest stakeholder groups.

A number of people suggested DuPont (as an alternative location). If you get another 9/11, (Joint Base Lewis-McChord) might close the freeway. That’s a nonstarter.

Q: Your boards were also thinking about security and safety standards. What do those factors look like, and why are they important?

A: They’re very stringent. If there’s a major disaster, our building needs to be the last one standing because of the role we play. That’s just true.

And so it rules out the whole Tideflats, the lahar zone. It rules out Puyallup, Sumner, Orting, all of Fife — there are major parts of the county that are just excluded.

Our criteria is not just the geography. It had to be far enough from hazardous things. It can’t be next to a railroad. It’s called the NENA (National Emergency Number Association) standard. Our intent is to meet all these standards. So we need the five acres, it needs to be in the right area, and it needs to meet all the standards.

This story was originally published April 28, 2016 at 9:29 AM with the headline "Proposed South Sound 911 center: ‘We’re not building a Taj Mahal’."