Emergency dispatch services for Clallam and Jefferson counties are getting closer to becoming a regional entity.
Clallam County Peninsula Communications [PenCom] and JeffCom 911 Communications — the 9-1-1 communication dispatch service for Jefferson County — have made small steps to potentially merge together as a consolidated emergency dispatch service, according to Karl Hatton, regional emergency communications director.
“The two counties have talked over the years of a potential merger,” Hatton said, adding there has been talk about regionalization for years.
“My hope is that by the end of this month we’ll have a draft out to the legal representations from all the municipalities and fire departments that have expressed any interest at all so we can start having some dialogue,” Hatton said.
Hatton has worked at PenCom starting at the Sequim Police Department since 1986.
When he started there, the office had a single dispatcher for just the city police and Fire District 3.
Hatton now serves as the executive director of JeffCom and is contracted to have administrative oversight of PenCom.
He said the first step toward regionalization of the two entities is to draft a new inter-local agreement for PenCom to join with JeffCom as a unified 9-1-1 center.
In 1991, Hatton said a consolidation formed between Port Angeles and Sequim 9-1-1 dispatch centers and they became PenCom under the City of Port Angeles, which it still operates as today.
JeffCom previously was a division of the Sheriff’s Office and became an independent governmental organization built on an inter-local agreement in 2012.
“JeffCom has done some heavy lifting and they separated from the county,” Hatton said.
JeffCom now owns its own radio infrastructure in Jefferson County and has an administrative board of directors where Hatton serves as executive director.
“The political push developing is that if we’re really going to talk about this goal of regionalization, PenCom needs to, as a first step, become an independent entity,” he said.
He said he is in the process of drafting a new inter-local agreement for PenCom with legal assistance from the City of Sequim and City of Port Angeles, Sheriff’s Office and Prosecuting Attorney’s Office.
“My goal is that by Jan. 1 of next year PenCom will be an independent governmental entity built on an inter-local agreement.”
Once the two are both independent entities, Hatton said it will be easier to combine two centers with similar governance and contracts.
Hatton also said he and Steve Romberg, who used to manage PenCom, started having conversations of how the two agencies could become regionalized.
Hatton said he and Romberg approached the state, which funded a study that weighed four options as to how the agencies could become regionalized.
The first option was not to do anything, the second to start purchasing technologies and combining administrative functions together, the third was a full regionalization in which both agencies and its employees move to a new facility as one unit and the last option was to co-locate, building a new center but operating as two different governmental organizations.
“Out of the study came the fact that regionalization is a cost effective way of reaching some of the goals we’ve been talking about,” Hatton said.
Since the study, Hatton said both PenCom and JeffCom have started purchasing the same technology, such as the centers’ new 9-1-1 phone systems, so that if the two entities do regionalize, it will make for an easier transition.
“We keep trying to future-proof decisions,” Hatton said. “So when we buy technologies or other pieces of equipment within our centers we’re trying to do the same thing.”
Hatton believes there has been support from law enforcement, city councils and the fire departments for a push toward regionalization of both 9-1-1 centers.
“We have broad political support from both Jefferson [County] and Clallam County for a regionalized 9-1-1 center,” Hatton said.
Clallam County Fire District 3 Chief Ben Andrews said the regionalization of both 9-1-1 centers seems reasonable.
“Larger regional (dispatch) provides a lot more redundancy,” Andrews said. “There’s probably some things being duplicated that could be shared.”
He added two centers combined might be able to afford more compared to two smaller centers operating on their own.
He believes the challenge will be in creating an inter-local agreement in Clallam County and determining how the new entity would be governed.
“Our hope is to draft an inter- local that makes sense to everybody,” Hatton said.
“We’re not intending to change the funding model so it’s not going to impact anyone’s budget in the next couple of years; it’s just mostly about who gets to actually make those decisions.”
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Erin Hawkins is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her at ehawkins@sequimgazette.com.
