From now until April 1, West Lake Hills will transition from operating its own local police dispatch service to relying fully on Travis County’s Combined Transportation, Emergency and Communications Center, or CTECC. Although CTECC had been dispatching services such as fire and medical units to West Lake Hills, the city’s own dispatch has managed and monitored all West Lake Hills Police Department activity.

“There was a lot of thought that went into this,” West Lake Hills Mayor Linda Anthony said before City Council voted Oct. 26 to approve the agreement with Travis County. “With Travis County taking over our dispatch, officers are going to be able to see officers from other department that are in the area. There’s a higher level of awareness and an additional level of safety for the officers as well as residents. That’s our goal.”

Need for a change

WLHPD does not receive enough 911 calls to be considered a public-safety answering point, or PSAP. Even though the city uses its own police dispatch service, all 911 calls in the area are automatically transferred to CTECC regardless of the emergency, said Scott Gerdes, West Lake Hills police chief. This created an extra step on all West Lake Hills police calls, which would have to be forwarded from CTECC to the city’s dispatch, he said. 

By being on a different computer-aided dispatch, or CAD, system, West Lake Hills officers cannot communicate with the units dispatched by CTECC efficiently, Gerdes said. By using CTECC alone, officers would have one point of contact for all situations and would use the same system and frequencies as other CTECC responders.

“[With the change], our 911 calls are still going to same place they’ve always gone, but now Travis County will be dispatching both police and other emergency services,” Gerdes said. “Officers talk to the dispatcher, and they talk to us. There will be a lot less lag time, and a few seconds here or there can make a big difference.”

By switching to CTECC, West Lake Hills police will be on the same system as neighboring Rollingwood police, which always used CTECC, Rollingwood Police Chief Dayne Pryor said.

“[West Lake Hills] is giving up a great thing to get a great thing, so I’m assuming making the switch would have been a tough call for them,” he said. “There are some advantages to having your own dispatch, but the way police departments operate and communicate with each other today really does require them to be on one central dispatch channel.”

Pryor was a West Lake Hills police officer when the city initially left Travis County to establish its own dispatch in the early 1980s. He said that at the time, technology at CTECC could not keep up with the area’s growing population and the demand for officers, especially outside Austin.

“There was a big advantage to having your own dispatch because there was no GPS; we didn’t have computers in our cars,” he said. “We were relying on our own instincts and local knowledge, and when you were on your own, having a dispatcher who knew what was going on in the area was a great thing.”

However, as CAD became the norm and made call data more accessible to officers, streamlining communication and officer mapping gave Rollingwood and other departments that use CTECC an edge, he said.

“Any unit that is signed into the Travis County CAD system can pull up a map and see where every other patrol car using the system is,” Pryor said. “Even if it’s not in our jurisdiction, many incidents require multiagency responses, so being interconnected and knowing where everyone is gives us a huge advantage.”

Specifically, West Lake Hills and Rollingwood will have a better way of tracking each other’s incidents and helping when needed now that they are utilizing the same resources.

“When we backed up West Lake Hills officers on a call, we would switch to their radio channels,” he said. “Our CTECC dispatcher would not be able to monitor what we’re doing, and we would have to report information back and forth. It worked, but there are times that could be a problem. Streamlining it like they have is really what the job requires these days.”

Local dispatch still in Lakeway

The Lakeway Police Department is one of the few remaining municipalities in western Travis County to operate its own dispatch, and the department handles dispatching for the Bee Cave Police Department as well.

Because of the close proximity of the two cities it is essential for Lakeway and Bee Cave departments to use the same system, share intelligence and know the location of the other officers in the area, Lakeway Police Chief Todd Radford said.

“Our dispatchers know our local geography, our officers’ voices and it makes a difference,” he said. “We’ve had times where somebody has called without knowing an address but could give us a physical description of a park or a local business, and because of our local orientation we know where to send an officer. Travis County is over 1,000 square miles, and their dispatchers usually don’t have that local knowledge.”

Unlike West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, Lakeway is a PSAP, meaning all calls from cellular towers and landlines in Lakeway and Bee Cave are sent right to Lakeway’s dispatch center, Radford said.

“Our citizens like how we operate and the expectation that if they pick up the phone and call, it goes to their local police department,” Radford said. “The citizens of Bee Cave like that as well because they know they’re getting quality service.

Fire, medical and other services

For emergency medical or fire service, dispatchers in Lakeway flip a switch, and within seconds incident details are shared with CTECC, which then dispatches Austin-Travis County EMS and/or the closest fire rescue unit, he said.

“We don’t get the information directly from Lakeway, but within seconds that transfer of information to and from CTECC is made,” Lake Travis Fire Rescue Chief Bobby Abbott said. “[The process] is pretty seamless.”

LTFR, also known as Travis County Emergency Services District 6, is one of 14 ESDs in the county and primarily covers 110 square miles from RR 2222 at River Place, down RR 620 and through the unincorporated areas near Hamilton Pool, Abbott said. All Travis County ESDs use CTECC, and the closest available unit, regardless of jurisdiction, is sent to respond to an incident, he said.

“ESDs [don’t follow jurisdictional boundaries], so if we’re closest to an accident, even if it’s in Austin, we’ll send our truck,” Abbott said.

Westlake Fire Rescue,  or ESD 9, primarily covers both Rollingwood and West Lake Hills and is also dispatched by CTECC.

Transition for West Lake Hills

Gerdes said the biggest negative to eliminating West Lake Hills’ dispatch is losing five full-time dispatchers. The city also needs to maintain a functional dispatch system through the transition to CTECC, meaning dispatchers need to be retained until the department is fully integrated with CTECC’s system, he said.

Robert Wood, West Lake Hills city manager, said the city learned
Dec. 1 that Travis County Commissioners Court had approved the interlocal agreement with West Lake Hills. The city expects that it will take about four months to equip patrol vehicles with the computers and interface needed to operate on the CTECC system, he said.