Warrensburg council approves MOU to join integrated IP dispatch with Johnson County agencies

Mayor Bruce D. Euler on Monday presented an ordinance authorizing the city manager and city clerk to enter an agreement with the Johnson County Ambulance District and the Johnson County Emergency Service Board to operate an integrated IP dispatching solution. Fire Chief Kenneth D. Jennings summarized the proposal and the expected costs.

Jennings said the city budgeted $35,000 in the current year to continue upgrades started under last year’s rollout of station alerting systems and that the integrated dispatching approach will let dispatchers immediately send basic incident information to stations. “So this MOU … lays out the framework of who's responsible for what, especially in the beginning as we get started,” Fire Chief Kenneth D. Jennings said.

The chief told council the arrangement is intended to split initial startup costs between Warrensburg and the ambulance district, and to share a small annual maintenance fee among agencies that opt to use the same station-alerting features.

Councilmember (speaker 2) moved the ordinance to a second reading by title only and the council then voted on adoption. The roll call recorded affirmative votes by the members present; the ordinance passed on a unanimous vote.

The agreement establishes the governance and cost-sharing structure for the integrated dispatch solution and assigns responsibility for early implementation tasks to the named partner agencies. Council members asked no substantive policy questions during the presentation.

Next steps: the ordinance will be implemented in coordination with Johnson County partners and the agencies named in the MOU will proceed with the system setup and cost-sharing arrangements.