(The Center Square) – Despite a Jan. 1 deadline, the Spokane City Council canceled a presentation set for Monday that regional dispatch officials had planned to give ahead of their scheduled departure.
Spokane Regional Emergency Communications told Mayor Lisa Brown and the council months ago that their relationship would come to a close next year. The dispatch network serving nearly all of Spokane County says it should have come as no surprise, given their tumultuous bond over the last several years.
SREC asked Spokane to commit to the regional model for years before the executive leadership voted in June to remove the Spokane Fire Department from the system in January. The city already operates a dispatch center for the Spokane Police Department, but it needs to scale that up as soon as possible.
Exclusive reporting by The Center Square revealed a feasibility study outlining $100 million in costs to establish the city’s new dispatch network over the first five years. However, the consultants had said it would take at least until October 2026 to launch, adding that the timeline is usually 18 to 24 months.
“Where were they the past 17 months?” SREC Communications Manager Kelly Conley told The Center Square after Councilmember Zach Zappone said Thursday that he wouldn’t have enough time Monday.
SREC sent a letter to Brown in April 2024, giving her one last month to decide whether SPD would join the model. The board ultimately gave Brown another three months after she requested it, but SREC Executive Director Lori Markham recently told The Center Square that further extensions are now off the table.
The regional network plans to begin rerouting all SFD calls for service to SPD’s smaller dispatch center on Jan. 1. Conley said Monday’s presentation was to inform the council about the services the city may still need to contract from SREC to stay afloat should the transition take a year or even longer.
She confirmed SREC will still reroute SFD calls to SPD, but noted that the network could allow the city to use its radio towers and communication systems already installed in SPD cruisers. Conley said there are other services that Spokane could also contract and hoped to explain all of that on Oct. 6.
“Thanks for reaching out. We’d be happy to have you present at next week’s committee. I’ll add you to the agenda,” Zappone emailed Conley last week before sending his cancellation notice on Thursday.
The Center Square requested the committee agenda from the city ahead of Monday, but Council Office Director Giacobbe Byrd noted that it wasn’t ready yet. Zappone explained in his email to Conely that other things had come up, and that he didn’t think they would have enough time for the whole thing.
He said the council would plan to hear from SREC at the following public safety meeting on November 3, unless they can arrange a study session with the network first. The Center Square contacted Zappone about when the study session might occur, considering the January deadline, but he didn’t know yet.
“That’s unfortunate, Zack. I get it, but it’s getting awfully late for the city on this stuff. Decisions need to be made,” Conley responded in another email to Zappone’s cancellation notice Thursday afternoon.
Zappone said he would check with Council President Betsy Wilkerson about scheduling a study session, and she told The Center Square on Friday that they were still working out the details. Wilkerson said that both the city and SREC realize that staying together is the best option. She hopes to maintain the status quo with the network until Spokane can establish its new dispatch service if they “can’t stay married.”
Wilkerson cited concerns over delayed response times by rerouting calls to SPD, considering the extra few seconds it may take to transfer them and the amount of resources the city has compared to SREC.
“It really is a public safety issue. I know we’re kind of disagreeing over money,” Wilkerson told The Center Square on Friday, “but it really is a public safety issue at the end. That’s what should be the priority.”
