Bergen County wants to regionalize 911 services to its towns — for free. How it works

Their faces illuminated by the harsh light emitted by the multiple display screens surrounding them, dispatchers at the Bergen County Public Safety Operations Center in Mahwah answer each incoming call with "nine-one-one, where's your emergency?"

The screens, some hung in clusters on the walls and others forming a half-circle in front of the dispatchers are filled with maps, logs and other important information to help them answer the 911 calls and dispatch emergency personnel to those in need throughout the county.

The 911 service, long provided by Bergen County, is now free to its municipalities as of July 1.

Of the 70 municipalities in the northern New Jersey county, 39 use the center for 911 services and 19 towns for full dispatch services. A handful of the townships pay the county to also provide a dispatch service for police, fire and EMS personnel. The county also provides fire-dispatching services to the Meadowlands through the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority.

Regionalizing emergency services

Regionalizing these services has been a long-term goal for Bergen County, said its Executive James Tedesco. Other emergency services that have been regionalized include the Bergen County Sheriff's' Office, the county's SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team and the water rescue and dive teams.

"Local communities don't have to fund these things, but we can still provide the highest level of safety for Bergen County," Tedesco said.

Tedesco said his vision was to use the communication center and all 911 calls to become a regionalized process that would save taxpayers' money.

Staffing the center with dispatchers, which is going through a shortage on the national level, and keeping up with new technology and equipment that changes often, won't be the responsibility of a single town anymore. "Our role is to help local municipalities," Tedesco said. "When they succeed the county succeeds."

A 2023 study by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch and the National Association of State 911 Administrators surveyed the staffing levels of 911 centers across America and found there is high turnover and at least one of every four positions available needed to be filled.

The survey found the top reason for leaving the job was the high stress followed by low pay.

One of Bergen County's solutions for this was regionalization and the creation of "pods" of dispatch groups for specific regions of the county based on call volume and needs.

"We believe that this will now help reduce that burden on small towns," Tedesco said.

How does Bergen County's emergency call center work?

If the county handles 911 calls and dispatches services for a town, such as it does for Lodi and Garfield, nothing will change with the new service.

For municipalities such as Hackensack, Edgewater and Ramsey, which only utilize the county's 911 services, it's a one-button transfer to the local police and fire departments. The call center dispatcher transfers the call to the local responders while remaining on the line to ensure the caller is connected before the municipal services take over, said Charles Schwartz, the director of the Bergen County Public Safety Operations Center.

A "unique" setup allows emergency services interoperability through all the towns with the same radio frequencies and equipment.

From the time a 911 call comes in until services are dispatched takes 45 seconds, Schwartz said. That under-a-minute timeline is important for residents who may have concerns about rationalizing the services, he added.

"The challenge has always been, 'I want someone who knows my town when I call' and through technology and us doing it as frequently as we do allows for that to happen through a process," Schwartz said.

Along with technology and mapping upgrades such as Google Earth, the dispatchers in the pods are assigned to the same areas daily.

"Through training, dispatchers become knowledgeable, and many learn about that town because they're talking to those cops and firefighters every day," Tedesco said. "Eventually, just by the repetitiveness of doing it every day, they're hearing it and retaining it."

When a town opts to switch over to the county's service, jobs are offered to the existing local dispatchers first.

Technology and radio equipment change fast, sometimes after a year in use, causing it to be a larger cost burden for smaller towns, Tedesco said. But the county is willing to pay for the "latest and greatest," he said, adding infrastructure and equipment can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Natural disasters and the central emergency center

Having more areas of the county on the same frequencies helps during natural disasters and in deploying county resources as well, Schwartz said.

"When I started in law enforcement 25 years ago, at times we didn't know what the town next to us was doing," Schwartz said. "Due to the interoperability, Bergen County's size and density is much more connected."

A large conference room with glass windows sits above the dispatching floor. It's a meeting place for county and local officials to come together and see "the big picture" live during emergencies or natural disaster events.

"We can see everything that's happening in real-time and push out resources to the places that need it the most," Tedesco said.

The towns that utilize the county's free 911 services include Allendale, Bogota, Carlstadt, Cliffside Park, Cresskill, East Rutherford, Edgewater, Englewood Cliffs, Fairview, Hackensack, Hasbrouck Heights, Lyndhurst, Moonachie, North Arlington, Ramsey, South Hackensack, Teterboro, Wallington and Wood-Ridge.

Towns that utilize the county for 911 and pay for its police, fire and EMS dispatch services include Wyckoff, Midland Park, Hillsdale, Northvale, Rockleigh, Norwood, Harrington Park, Emerson, Closter, Alpine, Haworth, Demarest, Garfield, Lodi, Leonia, Palisades Park and Ridgefield.

How does Bergen County provide free 911 service?

The communication center has an operating budget of about $7 million, with $5.5 million dedicated to salaries.

The center is staffed with 75 employees who answer more than half a million calls a year. In 2023, there were 588,000 incoming calls and 165,000 outgoing calls assisting contracted agencies. There were 10,900 abandoned 911 calls answered.

The county had been charging each municipality that used its 911 service 75 cents per resident. Last year the cost was dropped to 50 cents before it became free on July 1.

"When we looked at it from an income standpoint, it's a small piece of a $780 million budget," Tedesco said of the county's overall 2024 budget. "It felt better to just offer it for free."

Additional revenue can be gained through towns that want the county to handle their police and other dispatch calls. That cost is determined by how many calls a desk or pod can handle. Four people are hired for each shift around the clock. Larger towns, with more incoming calls, will have one pod dedicated to them entirely, while other areas of the county may have three small towns on one desk.

"And that's where the shared service and money saving goes into effect," Schwartz said. "We only bill them what it costs to run a desk."

One position, including salary, benefits, software maintenance and equipment can cost a town more than $300,000, Schwartz said.

Bergen County's operation has also expanded beyond its borders as it also handles Harrison in Hudson County, which pays for 911 and dispatching services.

Redundancy is key

Beyond the dispatching floor, there are rooms filled with backup generators with cooling equipment and elevated floors. Another room is filled with backup radios and computers.

"Redundancy is the name of the game," Tedesco said.

Besides the communications center at 285 Campgaw Road in Mahwah, there's a mini center in Paramus on East Ridgewood Avenue where 12 dispatchers can operate. There are also mobile command units that go out periodically for bigger events held throughout the county such as at Metlife Stadium or during other disasters.

Reports nationally of 911 blackouts or hackers are the reason why there are so many backups and to avoid a shutdown of the system, the county officials said.

A few examples of this technology include various backup systems including but not limited to, record management systems [RMS], mobile command units, data centers, numerous servers connected to the cloud, air-conditioner units, power sources, generators, hundreds of spare radios, and five response vehicles.

“Everything we have is at least duplicated, if not tripled,” Schwartz said.

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Bergen County wants to regionalize 911 services to its towns — for free. How it works