CANTON, New York (WWNY) – Ogdensburg and St. Lawrence County officials have hit a snag in their efforts to transfer the city’s entire police dispatch to county emergency services.
Since the end of August, all 911 calls from Ogdensburg have been received in Canton, but the actual dispatching is kicked back to Ogdensburg.
This was phase 1 of a three-phase plan.
City Manager Stephen Jellie says the city had been waiting years for this to happen.
“We’re probably about ten years behind getting this whole implementation done. Fire and EMS across the entire county had been done for the better part of 20 years and about two-thirds of police departments are on this system,” he said.
Starting on September 26, the city of Ogdensburg will no longer be dispatching emergency services between the hours of 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. Services will fall on dispatchers in Canton. Emergency services director for the county, Matthew Denner, says that’s a problem for the moment.
Denner says he does not have enough staff and equipment to do everything that Ogdensburg is asking for.
“It’s the only problem I have. Being staffing and the amount of equipment that we have, that’s why we are doing the capital improvement, so we can make room for that. So then, we could eventually take Ogdensburg if that’s what they want full time,” he said.
Denner says he can take 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. with little or no issues, but the hours from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. would be too much work for the limited amount of workers that he has.
County Legislator Joseph Lightfoot says that Jellie needs to wait on the county in order to continue to push forward.
“To think that he expects us that we’re gonna jump through the hoops or over the hurdles that he wants us to like a bunch of puppets, it’s not gonna happen,” he said.
Jellie still plans to go through with the plan despite messages from Denner, saying that the project has waited too long and residents have been charged twice for this service.
“Residents in Ogdensburg pay the county for this service and they pay the city for this service. So really, this will be an expense that will be reduced on the city taxpayers,” said Jellie.
In the end, it comes down to Jellie and the county to negotiate and find a solution before the September 26 deadline and before a possible breakdown of the county dispatch system.
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