Houston dispatch deadline looms

HOUSTON — With its deadline to figure out a new dispatch system fast approaching, the Valley’s smallest police department still doesn’t know who’s going to be handling its calls.

The city council met Thursday night in a closed-door session to discuss the situation. That situation, in a nutshell, is Mat-Com dispatch center, run by the city of Wasilla, told Houston the price to continue dispatching through Wasilla will more than triple this year. Wasilla says it’s only fair — Houston’s old rates weren’t based on any calculation of how much dispatching it required. The new rate is based on the same formula the city uses to charge the Alaska State Troopers.

“Basically the decision of the council in coming out of the executive session was to authorize the mayor to continue her pursuit of seeking alternative dispatch,” said City Clerk Steve Cunningham.

Which is to say they’re going to try to find something other than Wasilla. But that’s not really a surprise, Cunningham said. Wasilla shut that door a week ago. The Valley has two centralized dispatch centers. The city of Palmer runs the other and dispatches for its police department and for borough ambulances and fire departments.

“We could use their services and we’re open to that,” Cunningham said. “I should say (Palmer’s Director of Public Safety Jon) Owen is open to that, but it would still need to go to the Palmer council.”

That option is far from a done deal and even if Houston picks that option it will take some time to get services up and running. Palmer likely won’t have taken over before the Mat-Com contract runs out at 9 p.m. Thursday.

Plans C and D would be to contract with some other municipality — Anchorage or Fairbanks, for example — or for Houston to go it alone and create a third Valley dispatch center, possibly taking on contracts from other smaller municipalities in the state to offset the expense.

That fourth option, Cunningham said, would require at least six months to set up. It’s the kind of thing usually done through state and federal grants.

So, all signs point to Houston being without a formal dispatch service at the end of this week.

Cunningham said that borough officials have expressed concern about the city’s plan for what to do in the interim. The borough is the primary 911 answering point. So all 911 calls go to the borough’s contractor, Palmer, and then are forwarded to the various responsible agencies. Cunningham said it is the city’s position that the borough can’t tell a city department what to do with the emergency calls the borough forwards it.

What he thinks would probably have to happen would be for the city to send those calls into something akin to a phone tree. One call would go to a dedicated city line, but if that line is busy when a second call comes in the new call would be forwarded to an alternate line. If that second line is busy the call would go to a third line. And so on.

“It’s still coming in on one line it’s just going to be forwarded until you actually get a live person,” Cunningham said. It’s a system he’s been told other smaller communities use.

And, really, while Houston gets its share of emergency calls, it gets very few that are actually police calls. Most are fire or ambulance calls and the city has a separate dispatch contract for that, one that is not in jeopardy.

“We’re averaging 1.3 (police) calls a day,” Cunningham said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.