Eastpointe, MI - Eastpointe & Roseville join in regional 911 feasibility study

Published: August 16, 2006
By Robin Ruehlen C & G News Staff Writer

EASTPOINTE. A local emergency dispatch system might be a thing of the past, if a regional feasibility study with five southeast Macomb communities is successful. Eastpointe joins Roseville, Fraser, St. Clair Shores and Clinton Township in participating in a study conducted by Clinton Township-based Plante Moran to see if a regional 911 dispatch system could save communities time and money.
On Aug. 1, the Eastpointe City Council approved allocating $10,010 from special federal funds to join in the study. The money does not come out of taxpayer dollars or affect the general fund. Councilman Ron Selvidge said he’s all for looking into new ways to make the city more efficient. Right now it’s just a study, so when they come back with the results, I’m sure residents will have more say about it, Selvidge said. (Plante Moran) could come back and say it’s not feasible or cost-effective for us at all, or one person can’t handle all those calls. Or, they could tell us it’ll save thousands of dollars and be a great thing for Eastpointe. Inspector John Calabrese said local police chiefs came up with the idea of streamlining their organizations to help cut costs and decided it was important enough to be looked at by a professional consultant firm. It would basically be one centralized location dispatching all the emergency calls for participating jurisdictions, he said. All the pros are hard to say, since we’re still in the study stage, but the long-range positives would be saving money in our department and maybe greater efficiency. Calabrese said although there’s a concern residents wouldn’t get the same treatment or service as they would with a local dispatcher, those problems could be easily remedied with proper training. This is already done in parts of the state and in multiple locations across the country, he said. Roseville City Manager Steve Truman said the Roseville City Council isn’t scheduled to vote on the study for another week, and will look at preliminary data to see how much of the study the city can conduct itself. There’s no question there’d be cost savings, and we’ve been looking at this for a year now, he said. It’s hard to go to our residents for a 5-mill increase and not try to find ways to save money. The study should be wrapped up before the end of the year, a decision made and a plan implemented.