Brockport switches police dispatch to 911
Clarkson and Sweden supervisors not satisfied with budget prep process

Bottom line savings for the Village of Brockport under the newly accepted dispatch plan is $208,200, but supervisors in the Towns of Clarkson and Sweden say the village has simply shifted the burden from one municipality to others.

Discussion at the November 4 regular village board meeting centered around the village's proposal to utilize Monroe County's 911 service for dispatching police calls while the village would retain its own dispatch services for fire and ambulance. The dispatch center would operate with the present two full time personnel and would be supplemented with part time staff, Mayor Josephine Matela said.

Trustee James Whipple was the chairman of the committee charged with coming up with a plan for the village's dispatching services. Talks centered around this service following last year's budget woes. "We looked at all the facts and weighed the costs and benefits of our proposal," Whipple said. "We looked at what we had and looked toward what our future goals might be."

Whipple said the ultimate goal of the committee, which met for four work sessions for a total of 10 1/2 hours, was to provide the best services for residents at a good price. "It was a no win situation … this is simply a "band-aid" cure," Whipple explained.

With the newly proposed plan for the village's dispatching services comes the shifting of the expense sharing involved between Brockport, Clarkson and Sweden, Whipple said. "Part of our analysis included looking at costs from every angle," he said.

The 2003 fire budget as accepted by the village board totals $677,708, an 18.5 percent increase over 2002. The ambulance budget would be $156,894, an 18.5 percent decrease from 2002. The reason for the decrease in the ambulance budget, Village Treasurer Scott Rightmyer said, is because of funding from Third Party Billing.

Of the total $718,497 fire and ambulance budget, the percentages that the various municipalities will be funding are: Clarkson 34.69 percent; Sweden 40.63 percent and Brockport at 24.68 percent. Whipple explained that use of services on a percentage basis also coincides with the number of calls responded to in each municipality.

Clarkson Supervisor Paul Kimball said that in his 20 years in government he has never seen a contract negotiated in public. "I'm not here to debate the pros and cons of the proposal," he said. "You've off-loaded your budget onto Sweden and Clarkson."

Kimball said town officials had no input in the discussion and subsequent proposal presented by the village. "We are always waiting until the 11th hour so we can wrap up our budget process," he said of the village's last minute decision on the fire and ambulance budget. "We didn't create this problem and it doesn't make it right that in the middle of your budget year you off-load these costs onto us."

Kimball said that Clarkson will only pay what was in their budget for last year for fire and ambulance services.

Town of Sweden Supervisor Nat Lester concurred with Kimball that the towns need to get the budget figures earlier. "I don't know why we weren't given the courtesy of looking at the figures (before they were presented to the public), " he said. "This was handled wrong."

Lester said that while the village has gotten its costs under control, it has shifted the burden to taxpayers in the other municipalities. "No money has been saved, it's just been shifted," he said.

Trustee Peter DeToy said the village has developed an isolationist mentality. "We've simply moved money around in a shell game," he said. "We saw a lot of justification (in the committee meetings) to keep the dispatch but we weren't offered any outside options … We've done a disservice by not examining all our options."

Matela said she didn't think it was fiscally responsible for the village to have taken money out of the truck replacement fund to fund part and full time positions. "I offered several proposals that would have involved part time coverage during the day for dispatching until we made the transition into a fire district."

The stumbling point was keeping the two full time dispatchers and that, Matela said, has driven up the costs. But, she explained that there are some costs the village has no control over, such as insurance increases, which amounted to 2.3 percent.

There was some discussion of the village and the towns looking into a fire district in which the responsibilities for dispatching fire and ambulance services would fall to that entity, but that was a couple of years down the road, Whipple explained.