Clare County 9-1-1 director outlines staffing shortfalls, funding sources and radio upgrade plan

Marlena Terry, Clare County’s 9-1-1 director, briefed the county board on the central dispatch center’s operations, funding and capital needs, telling commissioners that staffing and aging equipment are the program’s two largest challenges.

Terry said Clare County’s current local millage is 0.35 mills and that the office plans to seek a millage renewal on the August ballot to fund core dispatch operations. She described two main surcharge revenue streams: a local operational surcharge of $1.75 per device per month and a state technical surcharge (25 cents per postpaid device with additional recovery methods for prepaid minutes). Terry estimated roughly $530,000 in local surcharge revenue this year and explained that state-collected surcharge pools are distributed after a 35% administrative deduction and then awarded to qualifying counties by formula.

“Some of that money is very protected,” Terry said, explaining that surcharge dollars must be spent on allowable 9-1-1 expenses and are audited by the state.

Terry told commissioners that central dispatch runs 24/7 with a staffing roster of 11 positions, including supervisors and full-time dispatchers, and that training a dispatcher to independent shift coverage typically takes four to six months. She said about half of new hires complete the training pipeline, a national-standard challenge she works to address during recruiting and onboarding.

“Outages are a major stressor,” Terry said, describing periodic CAD (computer-aided dispatch) and phone outages caused by vendor updates, fiber cuts or cellular issues that force staff to operate on paper temporarily. She said the county has prioritized IT support and that redundancy plans, including partnership with other consolidated dispatch centers, help but do not fully eliminate operational risk.

On capital work, Terry said the county is pursuing a significant radio console replacement this fiscal year and plans to install radio equipment at a backup dispatch site at the [Lehi] police department to provide true failover capability. Final quotes are pending and will determine whether the work completes this fiscal year or is deferred.

Terry also described a planned address-point GIS layer and mapping upgrades that would improve caller location accuracy; she estimated an additional $7,000 for a software mapping add-on and said some grant-funded GIS work will need to be redone after earlier data proved inaccurate.

Why it matters: central dispatch is the county’s front line for emergency response. Funding and equipment decisions affect how quickly responders receive information and how reliably citizens can reach help. Terry asked the board to support pursuit of the millage renewal and to continue IT prioritization for dispatch systems.

Next steps: Terry said she will return with final millage language and exact cost estimates for the radio and CAD upgrades when vendor quotes are finalized. She also invited commissioners to tour the dispatch center to see operations firsthand.