As Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown's administration wraps up its first year, one of the major questions that remains unanswered is whether the Spokane Police Department will join the regional 911 dispatch center.
Spokane Regional Emergency Commu-nications, or SREC (pronounced "shrek"), was created as a public development authority in 2018 to handle all of the 911 calls in the area, and now does so for 21 of the 22 police and fire agencies in Spokane County.
In April, the SREC governing board gave Brown a one-month deadline to make a decision: Would the Spokane Police Department join SREC, as the Spokane Fire Department did in 2022, or would the city create its own primary "public safety answering point" to handle city fire and police calls separately?
Brown asked for a three-month extension, during which the city hired a consultant to examine SREC's structure and finances. The report was released in August, and the SREC board and Brown's team agreed to form a transition committee to negotiate details for the police department to join.
Since then, the transition committee has met three times to address the city's concerns with governance, finance, and service levels at SREC, but no agreement has been reached.
SREC's plans to build or buy a new facility and upgrade all agencies to a new computer-aided dispatch system (both of which are currently underway) have increased the pressure to get an answer, since the costs will be affected.
The transition committee's next closed-door meeting is scheduled for Dec. 12.
GOVERNANCE
First and foremost, the city requested more voting power over SREC. About 60% of all 911 calls in the county originate inside Spokane city limits.
Currently, Spokane has SREC board seats for the city administrator and fire chief. Seven other voting board members represent various EMS, fire, and law enforcement agencies, the county and small cities. There's also one nonvoting citizen member. All votes require a 5/7 majority to pass.
In mid-October, the city suggested a new governance model that would remove administrators from the SREC board, leaving only fire, EMS and police representatives in charge of operational decisions. The proposal also would have created an executive committee, made of elected officials from the county and various cities, to make financial decisions.
However, other members of the SREC board didn't share an appetite for adding elected officials to their ranks. Instead, they recommended that the Board of County Commissioners add the Spokane police chief, as originally envisioned.
On Nov. 12, three of the five Spokane County commissioners agreed to add the city's police chief, should the police department join SREC, meaning the city would have three of 10 voting seats.
From the perspective of the SREC board and county commissioners, that means the governance portion of the discussion is settled, says Cody Rohrbach, the SREC board chair.
"The intent of the governance was really to put those closest to public safety at the table," says Rohrbach, the Spokane Fire District 3 fire chief who holds the board's seat for the EMS and Trauma Care Council. "The tides can change based on election cycles, but the prioritization of public safety from those closest to that — police chiefs and fire chiefs — will remain consistent."
But the city still believes elected officials need more oversight, says Maggie Yates, Spokane's deputy city administrator, who serves on the SREC board and transition committee.
"There isn't a mechanism right now for elected officials to provide oversight and input into how SREC is allocating taxpayer resources," Yates says. "From our perspective that is something we still need to talk about, but doesn't stop us from talking about the other items that are still on the table."
County Commissioner Mary Kuney, who helped create SREC in 2018, says politicians were intentionally left off the board.
"We really tried hard to take the politics out of this because it should not be a political situation when we're dealing with public safety," Kuney says. "I understand the mayor's thought, in that she wants more financial control, but I think we can do that by putting in some procedures."
The city and county both have administrators on the SREC board and financial staff on the finance committee. Kuney suggests those staffers can schedule regular times to report back to their elected officials with any budget updates.
FINANCE AND SERVICE LEVELS
With little progress made so far, Brown sent a letter to Spokane County CEO Scott Simmons in mid-November asking to bring in a mediator for the transition meetings.
The SREC board rejected that idea during its Nov. 21 meeting.
"This is never going to end. Are we negotiating, or are they joining SREC?" Spokane Valley Fire Chief Frank Soto Jr. asked during the meeting. "You're joining a county asset, just like all the rest of us. ... If this is not a negotiation, then it's time — pardon the expression — poop or get off the pot."
Soto warned that other agencies would ask for more control if Spokane is allowed to negotiate its own terms. Indeed, the Spokane Valley City Council has drafted a letter to ask for a SREC board seat for its city administration, but last week opted to delay sending it until SREC and Spokane finalize their discussion.
The remaining questions between Spokane and SREC center on financing and services.
SREC is funded by a countywide 0.1% public safety sales tax, a 911 excise tax that charges Spokane County residents $0.95 per month on their phone bills, and user fees charged to each member agency based on its call volume.
The city is charged about $2.5 million per year in user fees to have SREC handle fire department calls, Yates says.
Before the next transition meeting, the city has been asked to draft a service level agreement spelling out how many dispatchers and which work model would be expected to meet the needs of the police department.
Once SREC has that information, Rohrbach says the center can provide a cost estimate for the police department's user fees.
"To be honest I feel like it's the first time in five years where we've sat down with the intent to solve it," Rohrbach says.
The city has repeatedly questioned why SREC charges user fees when it has built up reserves of roughly $33 million in five years for a new building that could instead be paid for with bonds, and potentially reduce or eliminate the need for user fees.
SREC has maintained that user fees pay for operations, while some of the tax revenue goes into the reserve fund, and at least $14 million of the reserve was transferred over from Spokane County at the end of 2021 and in early 2022.
Partly due to the city's suggestions, SREC may stop looking to build something new: The center is currently negotiating the purchase of an existing building. The final sales details likely won't be clear until the end of the month, but it appears the purchase could be significantly cheaper than new construction.
If the city ultimately strikes out on its own, it could ask for its fair apportionment of the 0.1% countywide sales tax, which brings in more than $15 million per year.
Whether the city could negotiate its share based on population (about 42%) or where the tax is collected (about 48%), it's not clear whether that $6 million to $7 million a year would be enough for the city to operate its own call center.
"They currently benefit more given their disproportionate amount of work," Rohrbach says. "I strongly believe we're better together and it's in their best financial interest [to join]. ... If both parties continue in good faith, I think we'll get to a decision sooner than later." ♦
