The West Central Consolidated Communications dispatch center that serves Riverside, Brookfield, North Riverside and McCook is planning a move in two years to a new facility in McCook that will be built with the organization in mind.
The dispatch center, which takes 911 calls from and sends first responders out to emergencies in all four communities, has been housed inside the North Riverside police station since its creation in 2017. That is where space was available at the time. Now, the village of McCook is planning to build a new facility that will include spaces designed with WC3’s needs in mind. Construction is set to begin before the end of the year.
“When we first started consolidating, it was really like, ‘Who has space to accommodate enough dispatchers for a consolidated center?’ North Riverside had enough space, but it wasn’t built for future expansion,” said Jessica Frances, who is the village manager for Riverside as well as the chair of the WC3 board of directors until the end of the year. “North Riverside has been our wonderful host since we went live way back when, but if WC3 is looking to expand into the future … [McCook] would be able to accommodate space for our dispatchers, for opportunity to grow.”
Frances said it hasn’t yet been decided if the facility will be an addition to an existing building or a new, standalone building.
The move will see McCook elevated to a full voting member of the organization, putting it at the same level as Riverside, Brookfield and North Riverside. Up until now, McCook has been a “fee for service” member, paying to reap the benefits of the consolidated dispatch center without a say in its operations, according to Riverside documents.
Frances said McCook’s rise to full voting member will not greatly affect WC3’s operations.
“McCook has always attended our WC3 board of directors and ops meetings. They’ve got some really great staff that have come in and made different recommendations,” she said. “Even though they weren’t a voting member, they’ve always been collaborative from the onset.”
Since late August, each of the four municipalities have been reviewing and approving memoranda of understanding with each other and WC3, stating their support of the plan to build the new facility and elevate McCook. Riverside trustees approved the MOU at the Aug. 20 village board meeting, while North Riverside and McCook approved it at their respective meetings on Sept. 8, and Brookfield officials approved it on Sept. 14.
Revisions are planned for the intergovernmental agreement between the five groups that governs WC3, Frances said, but “the IGA is much more extensive than a couple-page MOU, so that will take just a little bit of time,” Frances said. “The plan is to have that done, we’re targeting by the end of this year, because my term as chair [will be] wrapped up.”
Frances said the new facility would provide independent kitchen and dining spaces for dispatchers in addition to adequate workspaces. Another key benefit, she said, would be putting the dispatchers further from access to the public, whereas now they operate out of a space that is accessible to the public through the North Riverside police station lobby.
“Typically, you want them isolated from a protection standpoint of them not having quick access to the public in case you ever have someone that wants to do something bad. This would provide a protected space in which they’re not easily exposed to the public,” Frances said.
“For security reasons, it isn’t common to have dispatchers answering windows or in direct contact with the public anymore. Everything’s done through the phone now, especially in consolidated centers,” added Tom Perfect, the executive director of WC3.
Perfect said the move should only enable response times to improve, especially as it coincides with what he called “a major overhaul of all our systems,” which he said are approaching 20 years of use.
“We are in the process of upgrading our phone system to a new next-gen 911 system, which supports text, video, voice. It’s got built-in AI for translation for 911 callers. It will streamline our answering process, and it actually will reduce our call processing time,” Perfect said. “One thing that was recently put out by some of our agencies is Live 911. That’s a program that we just implemented that allows officers and our command staff in the field to hear live 911 calls as they’re coming in. That program itself will definitely reduce response times.”
Frances said the idea to move WC3 to a new facility came about organically as officials in McCook were reviewing their existing facilities and realized they could accommodate the dispatch center, bringing all of the advantages of such a move to its dispatch staff.
“It’s important for the four communities to have a solid foundation for their emergency services. They have wonderful police and fire departments and emergency medical services, but the part that we always talk about is the dispatchers. WC3 is a very important part of that,” she said. “If we don’t have good facilities and good technology and resources and staff to execute that, then those officers and firefighters need that lifeline from that dispatch center.”
Perfect said the new facility will boost morale among WC3 staff in giving them more room to stretch their legs and show that they deserve their own space.
“[North Riverside is] amazing to us, but the facility isn’t made for a consolidated dispatch center. Every town that WC3 has had their small dispatch centers, because that’s the way it was in the past, and North Riverside just happened to have the biggest small center,” he said. “This gives us the advantage of building an actual dispatch center from scratch that’s made to be a large consolidated dispatch center, to take on more agencies, to grow, to get the buy-in from our people.
