Birmingham losing major dispatching contract

By David Hohendorf

The city of Birmingham has lost a contract worth several hundred thousands of dollars for providing police and fire dispatch services with neighboring Beverly Hills which decided two months ago to sign a new contract with Berkley for dispatching starting next February.

Birmingham has supplied dispatching service to Beverly Hills since July 1 of 2012. When the first contract was approved, officials said that the shared service would provide efficiencies and a savings of up to 40 percent for both communities. According to some reports at the time, Beverly Hills was spending about $400,000 annually on dispatching while Birmingham allocated about $600,000 each year for dispatching.

Also at the time, both communities were needing to update dispatching equipment which would have cost each community about $100,000.

According to Beverly Hills documents, the new 4.5-year contract with Berkley, approved by the village council on August 18, is projected to save the village a total of $182,000 over the life of the agreement. The current contact with Birmingham bills out at roughly just over $400,000 annually while the Berkley contract will cost about $365,000 annually,

The new Berkley contract with Beverly Hills includes 911 police and fire dispatch, prisoner lockup, warrant processing and use of the firearms range.

Berkley currently handles dispatching for Huntington Woods and all three of these communities are structured with combined fire/police operations in public safety departments.

Birmingham City Manager Janet Ecker told Downtown Newsmagazine that the current contract between the two communities requires a written notice six months in advance of a withdrawal from the pact but the city has yet to receive the formal required written notice. She did say that the loss of the contract would big a “big hit” for the city but the actual impact on current personnel would be discussed in coming months.