TALLMADGE, Ohio — This week, city and county leaders in Summit County are moving forward with the contract bidding process to create a regional dispatch service.
"This system is a critical system to public safety,” said Summit County Executive Ilene Shapiro. “We have come a long way over the last few years, and we really believe this will bring a lot of value and benefit to our communities and our residents and turn.”
Cuyahoga Falls, Fairlawn and Tallmadge are all on board and Akron is planning to lease a portion of the building to house its dispatch operations.
“What really brought all this together was all of these communities needed to upgrade their dispatching software,” said Summit County Chief of Staff Brian Nelson. “The idea of doing that together and leveraging those economies of scale was appealing, I think, to all of us.”
Fifty-eight percent of voters in Stow approved joining the measure, but it still needs final approval from city council. Council just received a presentation on the project last week and will vote on moving forward on Jan. 27.
“We had a councilman who passed away unexpectedly. One of their council members was I was going to be out on a limb by a medical leave for a little bit of time,” Nelson said. “So that really pushed this into this January timeframe.”
Officials aren’t revealing the exact design plans or specific address yet but are saying it will be located in Tallmadge. They’ve put together a working group of dispatchers, two from each community for input.
“Every dispatcher who currently works for one of our communities that's joining this will be offered a position as part of this,” Nelson said.
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