By Mary Weston
The Oroville Mercury Register
OROVILLE, Calif. — The City Council gave five thumbs-up to develop a consolidated police and fire dispatch center at the Oroville Police Station and to notice Cal Fire-Butte County that the city will not extend its existing fire dispatch agreement.
The council also directed staff to negotiate agreements with El Medio Fire Department and return to the council within 60 days with a resolution and contract.
The council also directed staff to negotiate with Mooretown Rancheria Tribal Law Enforcement to provide dispatch services and to submit an Indian Gaming Grant application for consolidated dispatch services.
At the end of a two and a half hour special meeting Tuesday night, Vice Mayor Thil Chan-Willcox motioned to approve the proposal, and Councilwoman Cheri Bunker seconded the motion.
With Councilman Gordon Andoe absent, Mayor Linda Dahlmeier, and Councilors Jack Berry and Al Simpson, joined Bunker and Dahlmeier to approve the consolidation as proposed.
However, Councilman David Pittman voted no, saying the proposal should be thoroughly analyzed by a third party to ensure the city dispatch could provide adequate services.
“My comment is there isn’t adequate information to make the decision,” Pittman said.
Pittman argued against the proposal for about two hours and raised about 20 questions about the ability of the city to provide dispatch services and th e ability of Cal Fire to provide better fire dispatch.
Pittman was armed with emails from several citizens objecting to the proposal, including former Butte County Fire Chief Bill Sager, who submitted as a citizen of Oroville a 10-page criticism of the consolidated dispatch.
“In the last 13 years, since the development of the South County Fire and Rescue Management Agreement, we who live in the Oroville area have seen a marked improvement in our fire protection services at little extra cost,” Sager wrote.
However, no one else from the audience, the city, the Oroville Police Department, the Oroville Fire Department or the City Council who spoke shared those opinions.
The meeting was called to consider the police and fire dispatch consolidation proposed by Oroville Police Chief Bill La Grone, who worked with Oroville Fire Chief Charles Hurley and City Administrator G. Harold Duffey to ensure the city could provide adequate dispatch services.
Duffey said he, La Grone and Hurley had met with Butte County Administrator Paul Hahn before proceeding with the process to ensure it would not impact existing Mutual Aid Agreements.
La Grone and Hurley also did their due diligence to ensure the city could deliver equal or comparable services, Duffey said.
Duffey said the council had the city’s very qualified police and fire chiefs’ opinions that the city could provide dispatch services.
Hurley said the crux of the issue lies in the current method of dispatching calls for fire services.
Now, all 9-1-1 calls for service from cellphones or land lines go directly to OPD dispatch. After a city police dispatcher gets enough information from a reporting party, all calls for fire service, including medical calls, traffic accidents and fires, are transferred to Cal Fire dispatch, where a dispatcher asks all the necessary questions again. Then Cal Fire dispatches the calls to the Oroville Fire Department.
La Grone pulled a random traffic accident call where the lag time for a city fire engine to arrive at an accident was an extra two minutes and 49 seconds because of the dispatch system.
The police department now provides dispatch for city police, but former City Administrator and Fire Chief Ron Myers contracted fire dispatch services with Cal Fire several years ago.
Although the subject of bringing fire dispatch back to the city has been broached several times, nothing happened until recently.
Toward the end of the meeting, Berry, who was formerly a city police officer, said he’d sat in the dispatch chair after Cal Fire took over and watched the lag in time for city firefighters to respond to calls.
When the city had dispatched calls, Berry said firefighters were in fire engines and moving within minutes, but after Cal Fire assumed dispatch duties, it was several minutes before the fire alarm rang and firefighters could respond, Berry said.
Former Fire Chief Eugene Ludwig and former police officer Art Hatley agreed with Berry’s comments after the meeting, saying a consolidated police and fire dispatch had worked better for the city before Myers gave it to Cal Fire without council approval.
After the meeting, La Grone said the next step is to develop a more detailed analysis of consolidating dispatch.
La Grone said Pittman had asked good questions that they would address in more detail during the process.
“I think it’s going to be better for the city and the citizens of Oroville, I really do,” La Grone said. “Otherwise I would not have proposed it.”
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