Perry Police Chief Eric Vaughn recommended to the Perry City Council Friday to let the Dallas County Sheriff’s communications center take over dispatching services for the Perry Police Department due to the rising cost of keeping up to date with the required communications technology.
Vaughn said the city currently uses two dispatcher consoles. Each console is about 20 years old, and each would cost about $100,000 to replace, he said.
“I’m really concerned about the cost to replace those units,” said Vaughn, the city’s police chief since 2014. “I have a fear that any day those units could go out.”
Perry’s six-person communications department would be reduced to two full-time positions, a records clerk and assistant records clerk. The remaining four dispatchers would be laid off, the chief said.
Vaughn’s recommendations came during a city council budget workshop led by Perry City Administrator Sven Peterson and Perry Finance Officer Susie Moorhead. The layoffs will create a surplus in the city’s general fund budget that will be earmarked for any unemployment claims.
“Both the chief and I have not taken this process lightly,” Peterson said. “Obviously, this affects people, and that’s not something that we enter into flippantly or lightly or anything like that. This is people’s jobs and lives.”
July 1 is the target start for the transition to county dispatching, Vaughn said. He said the Perry Police station at 908 Willis Ave. will still be open for phone calls and walk-in traffic during regular hours and after hours like usual.
“The public probably won’t notice a difference in how things are dispatched,” he said. “It will mainly be different for our officers and staff and fire department.”
Peterson said the city’s duplication of the county’s dispatching capabilities has been a subject of discussion in the city hall for more than a decade. The county will take on the city’s dispatching duties at no cost to the city of Perry.
“This is something that we’ve been talking about for a number of years,” Peterson said. “When it comes down to it, with the budget issues going on and the not-so-sunny outlook on future budgets, this is really one of those services where we are utilizing our budget to provide this service, and the county is taxing on the same properties to provide the same service, so it just makes a lot of sense with the current times we’re in to try to consolidate the services that it makes sense to consolidate and that will have as small of an impact on the quality of services delivered.”
The reorganization of the police department will make possible the hiring of a 14th police officer and a full-time recreation coordinator at the McCreary Community Building, according to the city’s budget projections for the 2024 fiscal year.
