Marshall County plans to resurrect a project that fell by the wayside in recent years.
During Monday morning’s Marshall County Commissioner’s meeting, the board requested of Sheriff Matt Hassel to form a committee to explore the idea of developing a cost sharing plan for central dispatch.
Hassel says he feels it’s necessary given the state of 911 funding.
“We need to look at assessing all the emergency service providers that we dispatch for with the understanding that 911 services are paid for,” says Hassel. “It’s the additional dispatching of the units after the original call, that’s the dispatch center.”
The concept is to share dispatchers to streamline emergency services and save on costs between local governments. This has been done in years past, but the county is looking to put the contracts back into place.
Marshall County would appoint a couple of representatives to serve on the committee. The City of Plymouth would also have a representative. Other Towns would likely need to appoint representatives to serve on the committee.
The committee would look to design the service and ultimately make a proposal for approval by the county and various local governments.
Hassel says the Sheriff’s Department would like to recoup the loss of funding and bring the facility to a higher level of operation.
“I think the starting place would be to meet, bring the file that we’ve had from about three years ago or four years ago and discuss how we want to move forward,” says Hassel.
No action was taken by the Commissioners on Monday.
A meeting will take place between the Sheriff and Commission President Kevin Overmeyer before more concrete ideas are taken public. Among the proposals is to create a separate entity to more efficiently manage the service apart from county finances.
