Gunnison-area leaders debate who pays for upgraded 911 dispatch system

Gunnison-area officials and city leaders spent their work session on Thursday debating how to cover rising costs to modernize the region’s 911 dispatch operations, with the county presenting an $857,000 communications budget and a multi-year plan to phase in a new computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system.

The county presenter said the dispatch center’s responsibilities have expanded from traditional phone calls to 911 video and text, school emergency monitoring and other services, and that state statute requires a CAD-to-CAD interoperable system by 2029. “There’s a lot of changes in 911 dispatch recently…we take 911 video calls now. We take 911 text,” the presenter said, adding that the communications budget has grown from around $400,000 in earlier years to roughly $857,000 and that the county is the only center in the region not charging entities it dispatches for services.

The nut graf: officials acknowledged the public-safety need but disagreed about who should shoulder the costs. City officials and mayors argued a population-based billing formula would unfairly burden small municipalities and some ambulance services; several proposed alternatives including a countywide line item on property tax bills or spreading costs across all county taxpayers. “It spreads it out to everybody…that’s what it does,” Mayor Mike Warner said when describing a countywide approach.

The presentation itemized anticipated costs and funding sources. The presenter said some startup costs — including a server estimated at about $100,000 — could be covered with 911 fund balances and grant money, and proposed a five-year ramp for CAD costs (20 percent the first year, then increasing to 100 percent). The presenter also said some partners (for example, Snow College) had been reclassified from population billing to call-based billing after earlier miscounts, and noted the county receives roughly $0.73 per phone bill in 911 fund revenue that is deducted from the operating budget.

City officials raised practical objections to a population-based model: registering household changes (roommates, students moving), taxing vacant land at the same rate as developed parcels and the administrative burden of recalculating bills after census updates. “If you own a piece of property and there’s no building on it, you’re gonna be taxed at the same rate,” one city official said. Hospital and ambulance representatives warned ambulance services operate at thin margins and would be strained by new fees; Brenda Bartholomew of Gunnison Hospital noted ambulance runs generally do not make money.

The meeting included examples from other jurisdictions and warnings about consolidation risks. The presenter cited other centers’ hub costs — one example given at $13 million and another where a vendor built a hub for $1.6 million — and warned that if the county fails to meet state requirements, consolidation into another dispatch center could result in substantially higher billing from an outside provider.

Participants agreed on next steps: the presenter said he would take the feedback to the county commissioners and return with refined cost models and proposals. The work session ended with a routine motion to adjourn by Councilman Pickett and a second by Councilman Child; no formal vote on funding or billing changes was taken.

The county’s proposal remains under discussion; officials asked staff to produce clearer options (per-call billing, population billing, or a countywide tax/line-item) and more precise cost breakdowns before the group reconvenes.