(The Center Square) – Spokane Regional Emergency Communications confirmed Friday that it will not extend the deadline for the city to establish its own dispatch service – which could cost taxpayers $94 million over the first five years alone – after a report claimed it would take the city until October 2026.
Exclusive reporting by The Center Square uncovered a feasibility study that outlined the costs for city taxpayers. However, not everyone on the Spokane City Council was aware of the total before voting on Monday to establish a new primary public safety answering point, or PSAP, called Spokane United 911 Network.
The SREC Governing Board gave the city of Spokane a deadline of January 2026 back in June when it decided to go its separate ways. The feasibility report claims that the earliest Spokane could establish a PSAP is October 2026, but even that timeline is contingent on every assumption holding true.
Much of the cost associated with this includes personnel, radios and phone systems, computer-aided dispatch, or CAD, software, retrofitting an existing facility and setting up other support mechanisms.
Mayor Lisa Brown briefly addressed these concerns during a Thursday budget meeting, noting that the city is negotiating with Spokane County over how to split their shared revenues. She said they haven’t been able to compromise yet and warned that SREC may even stop taking the city’s fire calls soon.
“Their perspective has been, ‘We’re changing the CAD system; this is our timeline, and this is the cost we want to charge you,’” Brown said on Thursday. “They’ve even suggested that they would stop taking fire calls Jan. 1, and we have strenuously submitted that’s not in the best interest of public safety.”
SREC Executive Director Lori Markham said her network has been in negotiations with the city since it first opened in 2018. The council helped create the regional model, but pulled out right before it went live. SREC has been trying to get the city to fully participate ever since, but Markham said that’s over.
Councilmember Michael Cathcart told The Center Square that if SREC doesn’t offer an extension, then the state may need to step in again. Markham cited state intervention as the reason for terminating their partnership in the first place after the city wanted to go after funding dating all the way to 2021.
“That is really what started these conversations, when they decided to take their funding,” Markham noted. “We said, ‘That’s okay, you can take your funding, but you have to take the work that goes with it; unless you want to change your mind, have us continue receiving the funding and join our agency.’”
The Spokane Fire Department joined SREC in 2022, but operated its own dispatch system before that.
Markham said once SREC stops dispatching SFD’s calls, it will reroute those over to the Spokane Police Department. SPD already has CAD software, but she couldn’t speak to its capacity to handle the calls.
“The aggressive schedule limits contingency planning and raises the risk of costly delays or operational failures if even one major component encounters issues,” according to the city’s PSAP feasibility study.
If the city wanted an extension, Markham explained that it would have had to contribute to SREC’s new CAD system, which goes live in March. She said SREC hoped to split the expense 50-50 with the city, but now that any shot of rekindling that partnership is out of the question, so is hope for an extension.
Markham said SREC owns and operates all of the phone, radio and computer-aided dispatch systems, and feels like the city should help out if it wants to use those. Spokane had requested changes to the SREC board and funding model, but she said the 20 other agencies ultimately went a different route.
“We’ve passed the point where we can dispatch for them any further,” Markham said regarding any potential deadline extensions in 2026. “That’s ultimately what we have continued to let them know, and we’ve shared with them that we will not be able to dispatch for them to the deadline that they choose.”
Spokane County mediated with the city earlier this year after the state stepped in and said it must transfer a portion of the 911 excise tax and other sales tax revenue that supports SREC to the city.
Those talks were unsuccessful, and Brown said on Thursday that they aren’t making much ground in terms of deciding what “equitable apportionment” means as well. Markham says SREC actually thinks the city owes it money, not the other way around, amid plans to potentially dip into its reserve funds.
Brown said the city has argued to split its shared revenues based on call volume, which would give it 55% to 57%, while the county wants it divided based on population, taking the city’s share down to 42%.
“If you looked at how the revenues are generated into the city and the county, we are closer maybe to 48% of sales tax revenue generated,” Brown said. “So you can see some different benchmarks there; obviously, we think 42% is not the right one, and so we have not been able to come to an agreement.”
Council President Betsy Wilkerson tried to offer assurances on Thursday that the transition to a new PSAP would not disrupt police and fire services, with the rest of the room in agreement.
“Police will still show up, fire will still show up, and your services will continue,” she told Brown and the rest of the council. “Make that very clear to our citizens as we negotiate how this will play itself out.”
Markham thinks any further delay would be unfair to the 20 other member agencies, who had already rejected the city’s requests. She said if the city were allowed to dip into SREC’s reserves, which it has been saving for a new facility, county taxpayers may feel the impact through increased member fees.
SREC already has a plan in place for the new facility, but will have to bond out the project in addition to any reserves that pay for the construction. The regional network is planning for future growth, so Markham said if Spokane’s new PSAP underperforms or doesn’t work out, the city will need to pay up.
The facility should last another 30 or 40 years, but the city would need to pay its fair share to use it.
Markham commended her partners at SREC for all the work they’ve done and feels disheartened that the conflict with the city always takes center stage. She said they have and continue to accomplish so much, and emphasized that the politics of all this is not distracting the organization from its work.
“If you look us up, what you see is all of this disagreement between us and the city,” Markham said. “There’s so much more that we’re doing for our community in this region and for public safety.”
