Delayed police dispatch consolidation costs Washtenaw County until Ann Arbor payments start
Washtenaw County and Ann Arbor will consolidate emergency responder dispatch services this July - but that's six months behind the targeted start date set during budgeting.
Now the county is paying toward an agreement that was anticipated to bring in revenue.
First-quarter county budget projections for 2012 show the county has to account for about $1.4 million for the sheriff’s department that it didn’t anticipate, said Tina Gavalier, the county’s financial adviser.
Of that, $660,000 represents funds not yet being collected for the dispatch consolidation, while portions of the rest of the overage represent overtime costs as the new service takes shape.
The reason: Delays in approving the measure now mean the project is six months behind schedule - and the county won't collect payments until the shared service starts July 1.
The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners adopted its 2012 budget in November 2011 under the assumption that the county would be receiving that $660,000 for the first six months of the year from the city for managing the service.
However, the city council approved the agreement in December 2011 - and it didn’t come before the Board of Commissioners until Jan. 18.
“There were a lot of things we couldn’t execute until that decision was made,” said Washtenaw County Sheriff Jerry Clayton Thursday. “The original budget was based on the assumption that there would be an agreement before the first of this year.”
Jerry Clayton
Gavalier emphasized that these were “worst-case scenario estimates.”
“The overtime costs and part time temporary costs are higher due to the delayed consolidation,” Gavalier said, noting the cost is slightly offset by the number of unfilled positions in the department.
Clayton said the sheriff’s office has $1.9 million in vacant positions, and said he won’t fill all of them by the year’s end.
Kerry Laycock
The execution of the agreement - set for July 1 - marks when the city begins to pay for the service. The county is responsible for hiring and training new employees, as well as retraining city and county dispatch employees to cover both jurisdictions.
“We’re still hiring staff, still training staff without getting that revenue from Ann Arbor,” Clayton said.
The sheriff’s office as a whole is hiring 48 employees, about 25 of whom are new. Training takes about three weeks, Clayton said.
“We’re increasing our staff from 13 dispatchers and a supervisor to over 30 employees,” Clayton said. “It just takes time.”
About 10 part-time workers will be hired to do call taking, Laycock said, and they will be used as a staffing pool for full-time consideration in the future.
“In terms of public response, it won’t be faster or slower,” said Laycock.
“We can staff the operation ultimately with fewer people.”
Meanwhile, Steve Powers, Ann Arbor city administrator, said there’s been no official request for additional compensation by the county to the city to cover the county's costs in the interim.
Powers said all of the city’s dispatch employees were given an opportunity to apply to the centralized, county-run dispatch service.
“The hiring decision is the county’s,” Powers said, noting union employees would have to conform to whatever collective bargaining union represents the county dispatch workers.
The dispatchers for both the city and the county have been housed in the same room in the Ann Arbor Fire Department hall downtown since 2010.
Laycock said the employees already have been sharing call-taking duties.
About 10 Ann Arbor city dispatchers have committed to stay on for the consolidated service, Laycock said. One is Ann Arbor Police Lt. Spring Tremaine, who oversees the city’s dispatch center and will be a supervisor in the county-run center, Laycock said.
The projected last day of work for city dispatch employees who haven’t been hired by the county is June 30, Powers said.
Steve Powers
Washtenaw County was able to garner $177,500 in incentive funding from Michigan that included $65,000 for Laycock to act as project manager, $37,000 for costs related to the new dispatch coordinator positions and $37,000 to hire a consultant to develop a new training program for the sheriff’s office.
Amy Biolchini covers Washtenaw County, health and environmental issues for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at (734) 623-2552, amybiolchini@annarbor.com or on Twitter.
Comments
racerx
Sat, May 19, 2012 : 1:40 a.m.
Kerry Laycock, unsuprisingly, was able to secure a $65K fee for his services, which really isn't that surprising. He has been a, ahem, consultant, who re-organized the city back in the late 90's. For him to continue his charade of accomplishment is really telling how he continues to dupe city and now, county officials with his, again, let me clear my throat, services. Under his guise he brought forth the bubble head theory that the city has implemented with replacing dept heads with overseers of departments. Granted it did reduce then number of dept managers, but it never brought forth accountability.
jns131
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 5:13 p.m.
This was mentioned by our Neighborhood Watch back in April. Ypsilanti has had the sheriffs dispatch calls routed to them for a long time. This is why if you call? They will ask where you are calling from. I get that a lot. I think it is a great idea.
ronald
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 5:12 p.m.
Shame on the city for the way they treated their dispatchers. All those years of service and now they lose all their benifits and pension. Shame shame Ann Arbor
YpsiVeteran
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 4:30 p.m.
Razor, it's not consolidation itself that is the problem here. Highly professional multi-jurisdictional centers are the rule, not the exception in many other parts of the country. These centers provide top-notch services. They can save everyone money in the long-run, but they are initially expensive to establish if done properly and with the goal of long-term viability and successful operation. This should have been made clear going in. It is the ineptitude with which many joint centers are undertaken that is the problem. Unqualified people do a half-baked job to begin with -- they fail to spend the money it takes to plan properly, fail to undertake the groundwork necessary for successful implementation, fail to staff and train properly -- and then end up giving up after spending hundreds of thousands more over time that it would have cost to do it right from the beginning. Then everyone blames "consolidation." This isn't rocket science, and we don't have to reinvent the wheel. Successful models for this exist in practically turn-key packages from nationally recognized sources. This is hubris on the part of those "in charge," purely and simply.
Razor
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 5 p.m.
YpsiVetern: Thank you for clarifying my point1 I agree with you 110% but again the people that suffer are the citizens and the employees in the middle!, not the elected officials. Consolidation can be done and done correctly, just look to the east coast and west coasts of this country, it is being done and done well. To many chiefs and not enough indians here in AnnArbor, Washtenaw County.
Razor
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 3:11 p.m.
Another complete screw-up with the tax payers money! There will be NO money saved in the long run. Not sure I would want a dispatcher with only 3 weeks training providing me with directions for CPR while the emergency crews are responding for who knows where. And as for Mr Laycock, he loves consolidation, he tried it with the AAFD and it failed miserably.
SW40
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 3:10 p.m.
Really our public safety dispatching is left up to part time employees. If there is one true tragedy of the economy and cuts to police and fire in Michigan it is the belief that public safety personnel are only worth part time employment with no benefits. If you talk to a lot of police officesr and firefighters you will find that many started their careers working as part time employees for low pay and no benefits. It says a lot about our society that we believe our police officers aren't worth benefits. Shame on Sheriff Clayton for filling vacant positions with part time dispatchers so that he can show a cost savings to the politicians. Just because Clayton is better than his predecessor doesn't mean hes doing a good job. Clayton is the type of guy who constantly tells you about the good job he's doing so ultimately people believe him, look at the actual product and tell me if WCSO is really doing a better job.
Goodphotographer
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 3 p.m.
So who has been saving money all this time? Oh it's the City of Ann Arbor. I guess the City is good at math when they want to be.
YpsiVeteran
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 2:38 p.m.
"Training takes about three weeks, Clayton said." I sincerely hope he was talking about the experienced people holding over from A2, and not the new-hired. Anyone who thinks they can adequately train a new dispatcher, or even a call-taker, in three weeks is criminally incompetent. In other parts of the country, training for new dispatchers and call-takers in multi-jurisdictional centers starts at 12 to 14 WEEKS and goes up from there. Some centers have programs that are 21 weeks, and these time frames are just adequate. It appears from this article that no one who has authority over this situation, from the county commissioners to the sheriff, has any idea at all what is involved in an endeavor such as this. In professionally run centers, jurisdictional consolidation is planned and organized for between six and 12 months, depending on the complexity of the jurisdictions involved and the nature of the services being combined, then implementation begins. The fact that these individuals thought they could vote on it in November and start collecting cash 8 weeks later is truly terrifying. The families of the emergency personnel in this county will be watching, as will the citizens potentially impacted by this gross negligence.
YpsiVeteran
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 3:09 p.m.
In other centers, even fully trained dispatchers with experience at another agency are required to complete the entire training program. This is the only way to ensure they are fully trained to the standards required and the only way to insulate the agency, and therefore the taxpayers, from lawsuits for failure to train, negligent hiring and negligent retention. It's also the only way to protect the agency from employees who turn out to be incompetent. If you don't find out about their limitations during training and flush them from the program either during training or during probation, it's pretty hard to get rid of them later without a lawsuit.
xmo
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 1:18 p.m.
Sounds like a good reason to vote for change this November when it comes to the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners.
YpsiVeteran
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 2:42 p.m.
The Commissioners should at least have the sense to be able to recognize a fake bill of goods when it's presented to them and then do some investigating, but it seems to me that the sheriff is the one ultimately responsible for knowing what he's talking about here. Isn't that why you have a supposedly competent department head? If he doesn't have the sense to do his due diligence, learn about the process an make an informed and realistic recommendation, what good is he...to the commission or to the taxpayers?
Ron Granger
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 12:58 p.m.
Summary: Completely BUNGLED Who is taking ownership of this failure? It sounds like a bunch of finger pointing. Who was the biggest champion of all this money that would be saved? They laid experienced dispatchers off, ruining their careers and putting them in limbo. Oh, you thought you had a secure job in emergency dispatch? Sorry - someone thought we could save a few bucks outsourcing. Say hi to the kids and see ya! Experienced dispatchers can make a big difference in getting emergency personal on site quickly.
a2huron
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 12:10 p.m.
The county incurring more costs than estimated and continuing to subsidize yet another entity. Big surprise. This is almost hilarious.
Youwhine
Fri, May 18, 2012 : 11:10 a.m.
The question that nobody will answer is this: will there be more, less, or the same number of people in the room doing the job which is currently being done? Ever since the county moved in with the city dispatchers, the city has been answering 911 calls for the county which has allowed the county to get by with lower-than-necessary staffing numbers. This has allowed the county to boast inflated productivity and capacity numbers by saying that the can handle X number of calls with Y bodies. If they carry this staffing model over to the city side when they assume the city dispatching job, it will result in significantly fewer people doing the same amount of work. The people in charge of the merger have refused to answer questions about how the merged system will actually work, but it appears as though they will make it work by cost-saving measures realized through corner cutting and shoehorning services together. For example the rumor is that Ann Arbor Police will no longer have their own channel to use and will begin sharing a channel currently used my the Sheriffs, Northfield Twp, and all of the State Troopers in the county. If you were to listen to a scanner and monitor the traffic of all of these agencies, you would see that there is likely to be times when officers can't get on the radio. The volume of calls and radio traffic will not change due to a merger, however the number of bodies in the room doing the job is expected to decrease. Combine this with the fact that the county has a habit of overworking their dispatchers (regularly working them 16 hours at a time) and the resulting high burnout rate nd you can expect that this will not go smoothly. Hopefully this doesn't result in increased risk to officers or the end consumer (a2 citizens).