In May, Mayor Gray brought a request to the City Council that we grant him full authority to negotiate a withdrawal from participation in the Essex County Regional Emergency Communications Center (ECRECC) by triggering a 2 year process for withdrawal. Last week, at our 6/13/17 City Council meeting, the City Council voted to approve the Mayor's request.
I received a lot of questions from constituents about what all this actually means, though, for the record, I didn't receive any direct communications from constituents for or against this request. It's fair to say that me and my fellow Councilors had to take something of a crash course on what the ECRECC is, how it operates, how it fits into the 911 system managed by the Commonwealth, what it means that we participate in the ECRECC, what it might mean if we pull out, and what the costs are of both staying and and pulling out.
To learn about this issue, I read all of the material that I could find, met with the Mayor and the Police and Fire Chiefs, spoke by phone with both the ECRECC and the State 911 Directors, spent a morning touring the ECRECC in Middleton with fellow Councilors, and participated in a 3 hour City Council workshop solely dedicated to this issue.
In this blog post, I'll try to answer a few basic questions about the ECRECC and the statewide 911 system, lay out my own thoughts on the issue, and explain my vote.
What is the ESRECC?
Here's this concise summary, straight from ECRECC's website [emphases added]:
We are located in Middleton, Massachusetts and operate under the authority of the Essex County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Kevin F. Coppinger. The ECRECC is the Regional 9-1-1 Center that provides emergency communications services to the communities of Amesbury, Essex, Middleton, Topsfield and Wenham, Massachusetts and is responsible for answering emergency 9-1-1 calls and dispatching resources such as police officers, firefighters and paramedics to citizens requiring assistance.
Additionally, the ECRECC is the primary answering point for wireless 9-1-1 calls in Essex county, northern Middlesex county, and 3 communities in Suffolk county. The wireless function is responsible for answering 9-1-1 calls and relaying them to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point, or PSAP.OK, what does that mean?
Let's start with the second paragraph first. The ECRECC is one of only three places in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where ALL 911 CALLS MADE go to be answered. The other two are in Framingham and Northampton. Most folks don't realize it but if you made a 911 call in Massachusetts, that call rings to one of these three locations ONLY. You can read more about the State 911 program HERE. At ECRECC, over 75% of all 911 calls received are wireless and this percent continues to go up annually, as more people do away with land lines.
Next, as stated above, once a wireless 911 call is answered by ECRECC, the call is relayed "to the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point", or PSAP.
What is a PSAP?
A PSAP is the 'answering point' where a detailed information is taken from a caller about their situation and, if necessary local emergency services - police, fire, EMT - are dispatched, or sent out in response.
This gets us to the first paragraph in the ECRECC blurb above. Since 2015, and as part of a process of consolidation, regionalization, and the reduction of the number of PSAPS in the Commonwealth mandated by the Legislature, Amesbury has had its PSAP/'dispatch' functions managed by ECRECC. There are 351 communities in the Commonwealth. In the Central and Western parts of Massachusetts, the majority of communities participate in regional dispatch centers. The picture is fairly different in Eastern MA, on the North and South Shores, as well as the Metro-West area. Here's a current map - communities are color coded to their regional collaborative. Amesbury is part of the lavendar colored ECRECC PSAP in the upper right. Communities in white are 'Primary PSAPs' and operate on their own.
Amesbury participates in the ECRECC regional dispatch center through an Intermunicipal Agreement that was authorized by the City Council in 2010. In 2005, the MA Legislature enacted a law that required the State 911 Department to work towards regionalizing and consolidating PSAPs, in order to reduce the number of PSAPs in MA. The Commonwealth oversees and supports 911 systems across the Commonwealth. It is an inefficient and costly proposition for the Commonwealth to support 351 free-standing PSAPs. The ECRECC was formed as part of this effort and leveraging the existing regional wireless communications center already in Middleton (one of the three in MA for wireless).
As a member of ECRECC for PSAP services, the ECRECC not only receives all landline and wireless 911 calls for Amesbury, it also dispatches emergency vehicles from Amesbury's Police and Fire Departments, using hardware and software with geo-coded functions to manage caller information and to track vehicles on the ground in real time. Amesbury pays a 'per capita' fee to the ECRECC for this service, based on population, somewhat like a subscription.
Starting to make sense. What do we get by staying in the ECRECC?
There are a few advantages to participating in something like the ECRECC. There are obvious economies of scale and value in sharing costs in such an arrangement:
- Hardware and other capital overhead
- Software purchase and maintenance
- Staff training and certification
- Minimizing staff 'down time' and maximizing staffing patterns
In terms of call answering and response dispatch times, the ECRECC has performed at or above national industry standards.
Sounds good. What's the downside to the ECRECC? Why did the Mayor want to get out?
The City Council was presented with a few reasons to withdraw.
- The ECRECC used a geo-location and tracking software that was widely disliked by the users (and it was the only PSAP in the Commonwealth using this particular system).
- In order to receive alarm signals as a PSAP and then generate dispatch from local Amesbury systems 'hard wired' to ring at the Fire Department (think school buildings, nursing homes, major businesses), the ECRECC installed a transmitter on Powow Hill that in some cold weather situations had proved weak.
- Because there is no dispatch center in Amesbury monitoring the channels of surrounding police and fire departments, because none of our surrounding communities participate in ECRECC, and because the Middleton-based ECRECC can't easily monitor all of the various emergency channels in Essex County, Amesbury's Police and Fire departments experienced something of being on an 'island.' Individual vehicles can monitor local channels but it doesn't happen in a centralized way. This can be important when, say, a car chase just as the one we had the other night passes from town to town rapidly.
- Concerns that the ECRECC per-capita 'membership' fee would go up (it hasn't changed since we joined originally).
- The Mayor and the Police and Fire Chiefs disliked the collaborative decision-making structure of the ECRECC.
So, what are the bottom lines?
For me, the most compelling argument for withdrawing from the ECRECC was the third one, about being on something of a 'island'. The other ECRECC participating communities are more contiguous. I've seen lots of both Police and Fire responses that involved resources from multiple communities and in fluid situations, so I can see how that might be an issue.
As far as the software and the transmitter on Powow Hill, grant resources are currently in the works from the Commonwealth that stand a good chance of funding software replacement to the preferred platform and structural upgrade to the transmitter. So, both of those objections were likely to be cured in the coming months.
Withdrawal will not change the fact that over 75% of all 911 calls (that is, 100% of all wireless 911 calls) will continue to be answered at ECRECC. It would change the fact, however, that dispatch of resources would be handled locally, post-withdrawal. (ECRECC would take the call but as soon as nature and location was determined, the call would be transferred to the re-established PSAP in Amesbury for full 'intake' and then resource dispatch.)
Amesbury would lose the economy of scale and leveraging of resources that comes with the ECRECC. It would also lose access to some grant funding for capital costs; Amesbury taxpayers will carry 100% of future personnel, training, certification, hardware, software, and overhead costs for this activity (rather than sharing them).
Amesbury would gain greater autonomy in managing on the ground resources. It would improve its ability to coordinate with surrounding communities.
We know even at this point that withdrawal will cost us more. The Commonwealth is about to upgrade ALL PSAPs to a 'NextGen 911' system. Were we to remain in the ECRECC, State 911 would pay for 100% of this cost. If we withdraw, we will be responsible for 100% of this cost (estimated at approximately $100,000). We will have to upgrade and annually maintain hardware and software. We will have to hire over 6 new personnel, with all of the pension and benefit obligations associated. Of course, some (but not all) of these costs will be offset by not having to send our annual 'membership' monies to ECRECC. The City Council was provided with some rudimentary future cost data but it was pretty clear that the cost estimates provided were inadequate and did not include some known (and at least one apparently unanticipated) costs.
What happens now?
Under the terms of our signed agreement with the ECRECC, we have to give '2 years notice' of withdrawal. The Mayor has now been authorized to give this notice of intent to withdraw and 'start this clock.'
At the same time, this proposal to withdraw and create a new PSAP must first be approved by the Commonwealth's 911 Department. It is not a given that the Commonwealth will approve this request, though the likelihood is high that they would. That said, we count bank on the fact that this approval, if given, will come with conditions. You can read what they told Athol/Gardner and what they told Hopedale at these links. The Hopedale situation is most like ours. They mandated that Hopedale either join or form another regional dispatch center within three years of approval (and, in fact, that is what happened - their dispatch is now handled by another community).
The determination of the Commonwealth to our request presents what I see as the highest risks to Amesbury, both in terms of potentially defeating our whole motivation to have greater autonomy (by requiring us to join with someone else instead) and in terms of financial unknowns. We don't have a price tag on the mandatory 'NextGen 911' upgrade that will fall on us nor do we know if there will be any financial 'clawback' requirements from either ECRECC or the Commonwealth.
Final thoughts
With withdrawal and the creation of a new PSAP, we are swimming against the entire funding and policy tide of the Commonwealth. But we hope to gain in autonomy what we will lose in higher costs. I can not imagine that taking this step will be anything other than a short- or, at best, medium-term situation. What the long-term direction of the Commonwealth will be - in this state that is notoriously decentralized in terms of governance - in regards to emergency dispatch policy and infrastructure is remains to be seen, but with advances in technology and deeper penetration of wireless cell phone use, it won't be towards stand-alone systems.
With the big unknowns related to what the Commonwealth might tell us, I offered an amendment on 6/13 requiring a 2nd confirming vote on withdrawal by the City Council, once we had that response from State 911. It seemed like a fundamental part of due diligence to get this information prior to confirming withdrawal. (I'd conferred with Councilors Scorzoni and Lavoie on this amendment in advance.) However, it was not seconded by anyone in the thick of things and there seemed to be little appetite to slow down this train, apart from Councilor Stanganelli. It is our job as Councilors to be cautious. I hope that the Mayor is similarly cautious about finalizing any withdrawal that presents Amesbury with unacceptable negatives.
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