What you need to know
In March, the city was notified via email that the Williamson County Commissioners Court was considering charging noncounty agencies for dispatch services. Prior to this, the city was not being billed for dispatch services, City Manager Paul Brandenburg said at the meeting.
The county is looking at implementing the new charges at the start of fiscal year 2023-24. City staff, council and police Chief Royce Graeter discussed the impact of the change in detail.
Diving deeper
Brandenburg said he’s fine with paying for 911 calls coming from inside of Liberty Hill. He said, however, he is not comfortable with paying for calls that touch the county’s computer-aided dispatch, or CAD, system, such as a police officer patrolling a City Council meeting—in which they have to enter it in the system.
“The county views that as a dispatch call, which is erroneous,” Brandenburg said. “We have a patrol that’s going through [a neighborhood]. ... They enter into the CAD system that they’re going through doing patrols. Dispatch has nothing to do with that at all; we just entered it in the system as activity."
Brandenburg also said the city won’t be able to absorb what the county is proposing. If the county goes through with the changes, the city would be paying roughly $400,000, which is not budgeted for.
According to the county, Liberty Hill has 27,091 dispatch calls, which includes neighborhood checks and security patrols. Graeter said the county is going to start applying a $25.14 price to every call.
Out of the 27,091 dispatch calls, 17,013 of them consist of neighborhood checks and other routine patrols, according to city data. The 17,013 calls at $25.14 per call would cost $427,706.
While the county will give out 2,500 free calls, Graeter said it’s still a lot of calls costing a lot of money.
What now?
Council did not take any action on this item, but there was discussion about the city implementing its own system apart from the county’s system that would track dispatch logs outside of 911 calls.
“I think we’re going to have to do it that way and just put it in another system,” Graeter said. “And then we still may cover the cost of those calls that can’t be pulled out of [the CAD] system.”
Graeter said the police department is working on building an acceptable alternative. The city will continue to monitor the change and keep in contact with the county.
