Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Public Safety Funding topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Westco director warns user fees will rise as dispatch upgrades, staffing and equipment costs climb
Summary
Amber Lillard, Westco dispatch director, told commissioners projected 2026 authority contributions and user fees cover continuing operations but that major lifecycle upgrades (radio system, phone/mapping and recording systems) and recent salary adjustments mean user agencies will face increased fees.
Amber Lillard, director of Westco dispatch, briefed county commissioners on Nov. 17 about Westco’s revenue model, CAD-based user-fee calculations and several large, planned equipment upgrades that will affect user agencies’ fees.
Lillard said Westco’s revenue mix includes 911 authority funding, user-agency dispatch fees, fees for public-recording requests, insurance reimbursements and a modest amount of interest income. “Our authority contributions projected for 2026 are 1,348,007, user agency fees total projected for 2026 are gonna be 2,300,000,” she said, presenting the figures that staff will use for planning.
She explained the user-fee methodology: Westco extracts CAD (computer-aided dispatch) logs and uses a three-year running average to prorate fees across agencies, which smooths spikes and declines. Lillard noted small agencies with low CAD counts currently pay a minimum flat fee (about $5,000 per year) but said those minimums will rise in 2027 as overall fees increase.
On capital planning, Lillard identified lifecycle replacements and rough cost expectations: a Motorola radio-system replacement planned near 2029 with an estimated cost of about $1.7 million and planned upgrades to phone/mapping systems and the Equiture recording system around 2028. The transcript contains an apparent transcription error for one phone-system cost line (literal text reads "around $6.50"); the speaker did not provide a clear, verifiable dollar figure in the meeting for that particular line item. Lillard said the Equiture recording-system upgrade will materially raise annual costs (she described an increase of roughly $35,000 in the shared annual fee, with current shared annual recording costs around $21,000).
Lillard said staffing and market-driven salary adjustments have been another recent cost driver; Westco is near full staffing (25 of 26 positions) and reported dispatcher pay ranges with top-out about $72,000, mid-range roughly $62,000 and starting pay around $56,000. She said Westco performed a market salary comparison and adjusted wages to remain competitive, which has increased user-agency costs.
When commissioners asked whether ETSA authority contributions alone would cover the upcoming upgrades, Lillard said they would not fully cover them and that user agencies will be impacted. She said staff would circulate the slideshow and the underlying numbers after the meeting.
During the briefing commissioners thanked Lillard and congratulated her on low turnover; no formal action or vote was taken during the session.
