St. Catharines taking on dispatch duties for more cities

St. Catharines Fire Services will be providing emergency dispatch for two more municipalities outside of Niagara.

The fire department successfully bid on a request for proposals to provide the services for Quinte West, about two hours east of Toronto near Belleville, and Prince Edward County, south of Belleville.

“We’re very excited to have Prince Edward County and Quinte West join us and we look forward to giving them excellent services,” Fire Chief Dave Upper said.

The St. Catharines fire emergency communications centre dispatches for the city and eight other Niagara municipalities — Grimsby, Lincoln, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Pelham, Port Colborne, Thorold, Wainfleet and West Lincoln.

It also dispatches for Norfolk County and Haldimand County and handled 1,081 responses in April alone.

Kristine Douglas, the city’s director of financial management services, said the two new partners will provide approximately $205,000 annually to St. Catharines Fire Services.

The other 10 partners provide about $830,000 in dispatch revenues.

The annual operating budget for dispatch services is $2.83 million.

“Bringing on additional partners outside the Niagara region not only expands the fire services communications dispatch customer base, it assists in offsetting the costs of dispatch services,” she said in an email.

“Accomplishments like this RFP award generate additional revenues for the City of St. Catharines and benefit all taxpayers.”

Upper said all dispatch centres are legislated to implement the new Next Generation 911, or NG911, dispatch services by 2025, and that’s leading some municipalities to look further afield for cost savings.

The new system will allow people contacting emergency services to send texts, videos and photos instead of being limited to a phone call, but it’s expensive to implement.

Upper said with all the technology today, St. Catharines Fire Services can dispatch to almost anywhere in the province and is hoping to attract more partners.

“It’s economies of scale where we’re basically splitting the cost among many municipalities versus, say, St. Catharines goes it alone. So there’s a cost savings there.”

He said fire services is also working with a consulting firm to look at its processes because it believes it may be able to find other efficiencies.

The city’s fire service, in collaboration with Niagara Region and Niagara Regional Police, is in the process of updating its computer-aided dispatch software program so it’s aligned with the NRP and it can have simultaneous dispatch before implementing NG911.

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