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Erie County Offers to Study Centralizing 9‑1‑1 Calls; Town Board Agrees to Gather More Information
Summary
Erie County policy director Jason Hurley asked the Grand Island Town Board to create a committee to study whether the town should close its PSAP and have police/fire/EMS calls handled centrally by Erie County; board members voiced cost and operational concerns and agreed to table formal action while staff gather data.
Jason Hurley, policy director for the Erie County executive, told the Grand Island Town Board the county is willing to form a work group with town officials to study whether Grand Island should close its public safety answering point (PSAP) and route emergency calls to Erie County’s central dispatch. Hurley said the study would be nonbinding and would produce a “blueprint” describing steps, costs and issues for supervisors, police, fire and emergency medical stakeholders to consider.
Hurley said the county believes centralizing PSAP functions can reduce costs through scale and provide more consistent communications and policies. He listed county staff and officials who could participate, including the county’s emergency services and central police services leadership and 911 operations staff. He said the county already handles central dispatch for police calls and has on occasion taken on calls forwarded from local agencies.
Board members and local volunteers raised questions about public safety, local control and precedent. One board member called the proposal “a tough one” and said the town should not be a “guinea pig” without empirical evidence from comparable transitions; others said a committee could be a low‑cost way to collect the facts. Several participants noted that some town calls already are routed through Erie County and that the proposal’s operational details would vary town by town.
Hurley and board members agreed the work group should gather data on call volumes, present and projected staffing and equipment costs, the legal and contractual steps required to reverse any future change, and comparative examples such as Monroe County’s centralized system. Several speakers said volunteer fire company leaders regard the proposal with skepticism and stressed that their concerns should be part of the study. The board did not vote to change dispatch arrangements; members asked the county to provide more documentation and agreed to keep the matter on a future workshop agenda.
