Council proceeds with plans for dispatch center, says no to broadcasting meetings

A long-delayed plan to build and maintain the city’s own police and fire dispatch is getting new life. On Tuesday the Lemoore City Council, despite “sticker shock” prices, decided to proceed with planning a new dispatch center, which would be built on the west end of the existing Lemoore Police Station.

In 2008, the Lemoore Police Department entered into an agreement with the Hanford Police Department for dispatching services for the local police and Lemoore Volunteer Fire Department. Previously the Kings County Sheriff’s office provided the city’s dispatch services. The change was caused by a change in records management systems. The Lemoore PD, Hanford Police Department and Corcoran Police purchased the same records management system while the Kings County Sheriff’s opted for a different records management system.

The Hanford Police Department originally agreed to dispatch for the Lemoore police and fire department for two years while the city expanded the current police station in order to build its own dispatch center.

However, a downturn in the economy occurred and the Lemoore dispatch center was never started, Cmdr. Steve Rossi told councilmembers Tuesday night.

Renewing the bid to build its own dispatch center, Lemoore may face a price tag of up to $1.2 million, all of it coming from traffic safety grants and fire and police facilities capital funds.

One aspect of the plans called for a price tag of $120,000 simply for blueprints of the new center, which did surprise some councilmembers.

Lemoore is currently paying the City of Hanford $400,000 a year for dispatch services. Rossi said the Lemoore PD could improve upon the price and provide better service. “Four hundred thousand a year we’re paying Hanford,” said Rossi. “We believe we can do it for the same price or less.”

Part of the cost also includes the hiring off at least nine dispatchers who are able to work seven days a week, 24 hours per day.

Councilmembers gave the go ahead to proceed with putting together bid plans.

In other council news, councilmembers decided that broadcasting city council meetings just wasn’t worth the cost, agreeing with previous councils that there just wasn’t enough public interest to justify the costs of televising meetings.

The topic originally surfaced during council gatherings in 2001 and 2002, but at the time councilmembers decided there were better ways to spend city funds and that the majority of citizens preferred the city’s newsletter as the primary notification of city business.

In 2010 the council took another look and surveyed a number of cities and counties and received costs of from $4,800 to $16,800 per year to operate a broadcast of council meetings. That didn’t include startup costs.

Again, councilmembers decided not to pursue the concept of broadcasting meetings due to the associated costs.

Mayor Billy Siegel claims community members are requesting that meetings be broadcast. Again city staff surveyed California cities and discovered that most local area cities do not broadcast meetings. However, 34 cities that do broadcast meetings responded and stated that the annual cost varied greatly, from $1,600 to $26,000, not including initial startup costs.

Some cities use various programs or hire an in-house videographer to record meetings and then broadcast them through public, educational or governmental access programs.