Glenville still won’t join the countywide emergency dispatch effort, because officials say the town would bear a disproportionate share of the cost.
Town Supervisor Chris Koetzle recently informed the Town Board that he met with Schenectady County Legislature Chairwoman Judith Dagostino, D-Rotterdam, and Legislator Tony Jasenski, D-Rotterdam, who have been open to the town’s concerns. The county had made some tweaks to the proposal to get the support of Glenville officials, who have been a long-standing holdout. Among the changes are a weighted voting system for the oversight board that would make decisions regarding the proposed United Communications Center. The weight would be based on relative expenses for dispatching costs from each community and money generated from the fee on 911 cellphone calls.
Town officials believe they would bear a disproportionate share of the cost under the “maintenance of effort” formula, which takes what the municipalities spent on dispatching in 2009 and projects that going forward.
County officials stressed that the cost of providing dispatch services under the UCC would be about $100,000 less than Glenville’s 2009 dispatch cost of nearly $800,000. However, Koetzle said he is still not confident that the county’s numbers will be accurate.
The county is asking the town to sign on for three years, and Koetzle said: “I’m still not comfortable getting into an agreement where they say, ‘Any of the problems we have, we’ll fix them in three years.’ ”
Koetzle said these figures do not factor in the cost of the 5,300-square-foot building for the new center and assume that dispatching staffing levels will decrease from about 52 to 42 through attrition.
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