CRESTVIEW — City officials are disputing a letter from County Commissioner Nathan Boyles, who states the city could save "hundreds of thousands of dollars annually" by moving fire department dispatch services to the county dispatch center.
City officials quickly disputed several assertions in Boyles' letter to Mayor David Cadle, including his claim that 911 calls to the Crestview Fire Department dispatch center are first routed through the county dispatch system.
"This duplication actually increases dispatch times," Boyles stated.
Cadle and Fire Chief Joe Traylor said that because of technology limitations, only cellphone calls are routed through the county dispatch center, where they are "instantaneously" sent to Crestview's center.
The only time there is a delay is when call volume exceeds the county dispatchers' ability to keep up, Traylor said.
However, upgrading Crestview's center to accept cellphone calls is "right around the corner," Traylor said, adding calls forwarded by the county system exclude valuable GPS data.
"What they didn't point out is 70 percent of the call volume is from cell phones," Boyles said. "You have a situation now where 70 percent of the calls go in one direction and 30 percent go in another direction."
Cadle also rebutted Boyles' assertion that Crestview was "proposing an additional assessment on residents to fund fire service."
"It was merely presented to you as an alternative to receive more funds to the city," Cadle told council members.
Traylor said the city would face an upfront expense of $179,000 to convert to the county system, which he said uses the State Law Enforcement Radio System, commonly called SLERS.
SLERS radios often fail when used inside buildings, putting firefighters at risk, Traylor said.
The system is so unreliable, Ocean City-Wright firefighters have resorted to purchasing their own commercial walkie-talkies at Wal-Mart to assure communications when inside buildings, Traylor said.
"I don't want my guys trying to communicate with a $50 set of walkie-talkies when their life depends on it," he said.
"They don't have to convert entirely over to the county system," Boyles said. "They could have a hybrid system. There would be an upfront cost but it would be substantially less than operating their system for one year."
The Crestview dispatch system, which services the fire and police departments, includes redundancy to assure service if one of the centers is out of operation, Traylor said.
"If SLERS goes down, we are still operational," he said. "If one of our two repeater stations goes down, we are still operating."
Also, Traylor said, because it handles 16 of the county's 17 fire companies and county EMS, the county dispatch center has been occasionally overloaded, resulting in a delay of dispatch.
During last week's overturned gas tanker accident, the Crestview Fire Department's dispatch center alerted firefighters ahead of the county system, he said.
"My communications center not only handled that call but 11 other calls at the same time," Traylor said. "Okaloosa County was handling calls for 16 other organizations."
"I'm not trying to tell the city what to do," Boyles said. "I know they're looking at alternate revenue sources and as a tax payer myself, I wanted to make sure they're looking at all their options."
Email News Bulletin Staff Writer Brian Hughes, follow him on Twitter or call 850-682-6524.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: City officials dispute commissioner's consolidation savings claim
