ST. LOUIS — Union officials and some ºüÀêÊÓƵ aldermen complained Tuesday about their lack of input into the city’s plan to combine the city police, fire and EMS 911 call centers this fall.
Mayor Tishaura O. Jones in late August announced plans to combine three emergency call centers in an attempt to alleviate understaffing and 911 delays that have been at the center of local media reports for months.
Alderman Joseph Vaccaro, 23rd Ward, said that he was upset that the mayor’s administration had not yet consulted aldermen about the plans and did not make police officials available for the Tuesday meeting when asked.
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Vaccaro called the lack of aldermanic input “total disrespect†and said aldermen may need to seek subpoena powers to compel dispatch and police staff to speak to the committee because he wanted to hear from people directly working in the 911 system today.
Jones’ Interim Public Safety Director Dan Isom, who oversees the fire and police departments for the Jones administration, told the Post-Dispatch Tuesday that he was not asked to speak at the meeting, but would if asked. He also sent members a letter on the 911 merger progress Tuesday morning.
Isom said he’s still hoping the city will complete the first phase of merging the 911 systems in October, which will include moving all city 911 dispatchers to the police department’s downtown call center and putting them all onto the the same job classifications and pay scales.
Today all 911 calls come to police dispatch. If EMS or the fire department is needed, police dispatchers transfer calls to separate centers, often resulting in delays.
“Right now we’re competing with ourselves for dispatchers,†Isom said, noting, for example, that the city pays police dispatchers more than EMS, with starting salaries about $38,000 compared with $31,000.
Police and fire union officials also complained of the lack of information in Tuesday’s meeting, saying their members were concerned.
Demetris Alfred, president of the Firefighters Local 73, told aldermen that among his concerns are that the fire department is short about eight dispatchers but fills shifts with firefighters cross-trained to take 911 calls.
Without firefighters being available as backup, Alfred said he worries the plan may “only multiply the problem†of delays.
Police dispatchers are also seriously understaffed. As of Tuesday, 30 of the division’s 97 budgeted positions were vacant, according to police.
The consequences of those vacancies and the disjointed system put ºüÀêÊÓƵ’ 911 system far below national industry standards this year, which say at least 90% of 911 calls should be answered in 10 seconds or less. From February through May, about 64% of ºüÀêÊÓƵ 911 calls were answered within that timeframe.
Isom said Tuesday that his department is waiting for a proposal for the first step of consolidation— putting dispatchers into the same building and on the same pay scale — to be approved by the city department of personnel before his department seeks union input.
"We’ve found it’s best to work out these details first before you go to employees with the proposals,†Isom said, adding that there have been meetings with fire and police staff to get input on combining the systems.
Isom added that the plan will be just the first step to fully combine city 911.
In the long term, he said the city plans to combine dispatchers onto the same 911 software, which would take at least one year to complete, and put them all into the same city department under the ºüÀêÊÓƵ Emergency Management Agency.
The city police 911 center facility is also aging and limited in space, so Isom said the Jones administration also eventually plans to build a facility for the new combined center.That project is on the city’s list of capital improvements and is estimated to cost about $32 million.
Under previous mayor Lyda Krewson, the city hired an architecture firm to plan a new facility, but the contract was paused in May 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
From design to completion, the project is estimated to take about three years. A city-owned property next toÌýºüÀêÊÓƵ Fire Department Headquarters has been choosen as a potential site for the project.Ìý
