City Of Harrisburg Switching To Dauphin County Police Dispatch Services

Image via Wikipedia

Mayor Linda Thompson announced that the City of Harrisburg will move their emergency police dispatching to Dauphin County.  Dauphin County has been courting Harrisburg for months now trying to get the city to commit to a switch.

If all goes well, it will take Dauphin County about six months to ramp up before the switch.  The county feels this transition of services can be accomplished seamlessly.

Fortunately, Dauphin County Commissioners included money in their 2011 budget in the event Harrisburg decided to use the county dispatch services.

Harrisburg officials feel they can save an estimated $400,000 a year if they make this change.

Montgomery County has been slowly taking over these services for many municipalities in our area.  Centralization of services usually makes sense from a cost saving perspective.

Update!  And informed reader has supplied this information about Montgomery County dispatch centralization:

There are currently seven departments who have not made the switch: Abington, Lower Merion, Narberth, Upper Merion, Lower Providence, Upper Dublin and Pottstown.  Horsham and Montgomery are planning to switch in the next couple weeks.

 

Lower Providence did switch but was unhappy with the results and resumed their own operations.