DaytonDailyNews.com

Tonight Kettering City Council likely will vote to pull out of discussions about a consolidated emergency dispatch center for Montgomery County.

Mark W. Schwieterman, Kettering's city manager, said Friday that he's recommending that the city bail from the talks. He wouldn't be going out on this limb if there was any chance that his bosses will reverse him.

The recommendation is wrong.

A consolidated dispatch center is right on the merits. The people who insist otherwise are either blind to, or uninformed about, the high cost and incredible power of technology. Public safety communications equipment just keeps getting better. Emergency dispatchers don't have to be physically sitting in Kettering, or even personally know Kettering, to alert the right first-responders about an emergency.

If that were a requirement, every town in the country that's bigger than Kettering and that only has one 911 dispatching center would be doing a lousy job of responding to fires, heart attack victims and car wrecks. Of course, that's not the case.

Having enough well-trained people in dispatching positions is essential, and it's important that their equipment be first-rate.

That's why, for this public service, bigger is generally better. The larger the size of an operation, the easier it is to invest in new computers, to afford to maintain them, and to make sure there's enough backup.

Some Kettering City Council members were open to being part of a consolidated system, and Kettering was even in the running for the site of the future center. (That possibility is now out the window.)

But both the Kettering police chief and fire chief said early and publicly that they had grave concerns. What was the deal with that? Don't they work for the city manager, and doesn't he work for the city council? Isn't the city council charged with making this call? Isn't it supposed to be running things?

Definitely the police and fire chiefs' opinions matter, but they're not the people who have to figure out how to pay for costly investments. And they don't have to get re-elected when taxes go up or services are cut. Once the two top public safety officials said they didn't like the idea, that tied the council's hands.

Meanwhile, Kettering's police and fire personnel have been telling all their friends and neighbors that consolidation would put them at risk. But the friends and neighbors don't know to ask: How can that be? Washington Twp. and Trotwood, for instance, don't have their own dispatch centers and somehow fire trucks and medics get to those people's homes quickly and without getting lost.

Everywhere in the country that consolidated dispatching has been implemented, it's invariably been successful. But in the beginning, safety officials and police and fire unions typically have balked. The chiefs like to be in control of their own communication centers, and unions absolutely object to jobs being eliminated.

(Currently, there are about 195 dispatchers scattered among 17 dispatch centers in Montgomery County; a consultant has said that a central center could be staffed with half that number.)

Kettering critics of consolidation have gotten enough signatures to put the issue of whether to participate in the talks on the ballot in November. Some people think that voters probably would endorse keeping things the way they are, and that city council members don't want to be seen as being on the wrong side of the public.

OK. But if voters are only hearing from those who want to keep their jobs or who think this is still the 20th century when it comes to public safety technology, that doesn't bode well for the future. Even Mr. Schwieterman admits that by going it alone, Kettering citizens will pay more — about $3 million over 10 years.

The Montgomery County communities that are dedicated to finding ways to save taxpayer money and that can see the benefits of a bigger, more modern system need to go forward even without Kettering — and the other cities that, unlike Kettering, never sat for even a minute to discuss consolidated dispatch.

One day the price will become too much for all of them to pretend they're islands.