KINGSTON — The North Kitsap Fire & Rescue Board of Commissioners will have a public hearing at 7:15 p.m. March 28 on transferring the department’s interests and liabilities in the assets of CenCom to Kitsap County for the reorganization and re-establishment of CenCom as a separate legal entity.
A copy of the resolution is available the station and on the website at www.nkfr.org. Residents may speak for or against the resolution at the hearing, at the headquarters station at 26642 Miller Bay Road.
The Poulsbo City Council is expected to have a public hearing on a similar resolution on April 9.
CenCom — aka Central Commuications, Kitsap County’s 911 call dispatch center — proposes becoming an independent organization rather than a department of Kitsap County. The move is not expected to increase what Kitsap County residents currently pay for their 911 service, proponents say.
At its March 2 meeting, the Poulsbo City Council became the latest city in the county to consider a resolution creating a Kitsap 911 Public Development Authority. According to Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erickson, the change is more of an administrative move, designed to give Kitsap 911 more operational independence. Erickson, a member of the CenCom Executive Committee, said the proposal is the result of a multi-year planning process.
In 2015, CenCom had $8.6 million in revenue — $6 million of that from taxes — and $10.2 million in expenses, according to an annual report online. CenCom is budgeted for 72 employees. It dispatched 245,000 calls in 2015.
Revenues in 2014 were $8.4 million and expenses were nearly $9 million. The only year since 2010 that revenues exceeded expenditures was in 2012.
CenCom Director Richard Kirton said, “The goal is to make us more nimble, to be able to implement changes faster.” Under the current system, CenCom’s board can make operational and budget decisions, but those decisions can be undone by the County Commission.
According to Erickson, one major problem under the current system is that the county has been slow to fill dispatcher vacancies; the number of unfilled jobs has been as high as 35 percent at times. She said the county charges CenCom for health insurance and benefits as if CenCom were 100 percent staffed. “So, you can see there a disincentive here for the [county] to fill vacancies.”
If CenCom does become Kitsap 911, it would do its own hiring. “Handling 911 emergency calls is a very special job that takes a very special person,” Erickson said. “Who better to know what to look for in a candidate than the same people who are actually doing it every day?“
The county will still be involved, both in tax collection and on the Kitsap 911 governing board and executive committee. The makeup of the new Kitsap 911 governing board would be the same as CenCom’s current board and consist of the three county commissioners, the county sheriff, the Bremerton mayor and two city council members, a representative appointed by the Bainbridge Island city council and the mayors of Port Orchard and Poulsbo, and three area fire commissioners appointed by the Kitsap County Fire Commissioners Association.
The heavy lifting will be done by a five-member executive committee: the chairperson of the governing board, one fire commissioner, one representative for Kitsap County, a representative from Bremerton, and a representative appointed by the mayors of Port Orchard, Poulsbo and Bainbridge Island — Kitsap county’s so-called “small cities.”
The new governing board and the executive committee will benefit from strategic advisory board, consisting of the sheriff and all of the police and fire chiefs in the county.
