Three cities consider breaking away from Monterey County dispatch services
The Salinas City Council voted Tuesday night to cut ties with Monterey County dispatch in 2017 and Pacific Grove city leaders discussed doing the same thing Wednesday night.
Pacific Grove’s Wednesday night discussion was about the potential of separating dispatch services from the county. Seaside will take a vote at its meeting Thursday night. Either way, nothing will change for another two years.
Seaside Police Chief Vicki Myers said the key issue is money — specifically, when the city is paying for county dispatch services over which it has no control.
“Well, while we are paying the cost, for instance, using that as an example, we don’t have the ability to really manage those costs,” Myers said.
Pacific Grove pays the county $322,000 for dispatch services, and Myers said Seaside’s dispatch cost is more than $550,000. Add to that the $2.2 million that Salinas pays and the county stands to lose a lot of money. But the county said, if cities opt out, public safety will suffer.
“Several times a week when there’s a structure fire in the city of Salinas, the regional firefighters come in to support. If Salinas were dispatched elsewhere then the timeline to get that support in is going to be lengthy,” Director of Monterey County Emergency Communications William Harry said.
Myers said that just because they are considering a letter of intent in Pacific Grove and Seaside it, doesn’t mean they’ve made a decision. But the county said that letter is final to them.
“Really as far as I’m concerned there really is no option to sit and wait. When their notice is in, the expectation is that they’ve made other plans and they’ll be leaving,” Harry said.
Myers said Pacific Grove and Seaside will weigh out their options and see what fits best for them. If they do decide to separate from Monterey County’s dispatch services, it would be effective July 1, of 2017.
Some of the options for these cities is to set up their own dispatch centers, Carmel, Cal Fire and CHP already have their own. They could also join Santa Cruz County’s dispatch center, San Benito County joined in 2011.
