Rowan: Dispatch costs will be communicated earlier
By Terry Murry on Wednesday, June 12th, 2024 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
UMATILLA COUNTY – Umatilla County Sheriff Terry Rowan acknowledged that participating agencies were surprised when they learned about sizeable increases in the cost of emergency dispatch services. He says the jump was prompted by the Umatilla County Board of Commissioners deciding to increase salaries because the department was short staffed.
Police and fire departments didn’t find out about the increases until early May after many of them had already formed their budgets for the fiscal year beginning July 1. Rowan says he will work to make sure the subscribing agencies are part of the conversation earlier, beginning in late fall.
“We’ll put some strategic plans together and lay it out on the table for the stakeholders to take a look at and see if we can get buy-in from them,” he said.
He said that feedback will help drive the budget.
“Once we do receive our budget sheets and we’re going through that exercise, that can involve them in that process as we can anyway,” Rowan said. “At the end of the day, though, the discussion really has to be between the commissioners and some of those stakeholders to spell out why these costs have gone up the way they have.”
