Salt Lake City Council reviews FY26 9‑1‑1 budget, department proposes AI triage for nonemergency calls

Salt Lake City’s 9‑1‑1 Communications Bureau presented its FY26 budget request to the City Council on June 5, asking for a 0.71% increase in general‑fund support and proposing a new $325,888 ongoing expenditure from the city’s e‑9‑1‑1 fund to purchase an AI call‑triage application.

The proposal would keep the department at 100 authorized employees — 81 frontline dispatchers — while the department reported 15 dispatcher vacancies. “Out of the 650 plus thousand calls that we receive, a little under 200,000 of those are actually 9‑1‑1,” Lisa Kehoe, 9‑1‑1 dispatch director, told council members, illustrating the volume of nonemergency calls the AI tool is intended to address.

Why it matters: Council members said they want the city to expand capacity and maintain emergency reliability without shifting callers who need human assistance. The 9‑1‑1 division told the council the e‑9‑1‑1 fund would support ongoing software costs and that the department expects a FY26 ending balance of about $5.2 million in the e‑9‑1‑1 fund; staff said a healthy balance is roughly $3…