Call for Will County 911 board to formally scrap command center plan

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Updated: August 28, 2011 12:23AM

Mokena Village Trustee Don Labriola is relieved to hear that the plug has been pulled on a new 911 command center.

The Will County 911 board should have scuttled the project years ago before spending almost $1 million on architectural plans for the building, Labriola said Tuesday.

Will County 911, created by referendum in 1989, is funded through 75-cent monthly phone surcharges paid by county residents. A 17-member Emergency Telephone System Board controls how the money is spent.

Earlier this month, the ETSB’s long-range planning committee informally agreed to drop plans for the $36 million building, Chairwoman Julie Ponce-Doyle said. The plan was dropped because it appears Will County government is no longer interested in partnering on the project, she explained.

But Labriola, who is chairman of the Lincolnway 911 board, wants the ETSB to make the decision formal by taking a vote. He also wants the board, which meets at 9 a.m. Thursday at the Will County Office Building, to end its contract with the architectural firm — Healy Bender and Associates of Naperville — so no more money is spent on the project.

The command center, which would have been built on Caton Farm Road east of Weber Road, has been discussed for seven years and prices have ranged from $10 million to $43 million based on which county offices would be included. The original goal was to have the command center house one of only three dispatch centers in the county.

Proponents argued that 911 consolidation would save money and improve service.

Opponents preferred to let consolidation occur naturally by communities that wished to do so. Twenty years ago there were 18 dispatch centers in the county; now there are eight. So consolidation is happening on its own, Labriola said.

He added that the command center was never really about consolidation, it was about building a very expensive building.

Labriola said the $8 million the ETSB has saved for the command center should now be spent on 911 equipment, which is what was intended by the surcharge.

Labriola said there is a lack of communication between the Will County 911 and the agencies it serves.

“It’s been chaotic since the beginning.”

Crete Village President Michael Einhorn also opposed the command center plan. He serves as chairman of the board for Eastcom, a dispatch center that serves eastern Will County.

“I can’t help feeling that the project has been mismanaged for several years,” he said. “It’s time to put this million-dollar mistake behind us and move on to develop different plans to meet the needs of 911.”

Will County should have been the lead agency to build a building and include room for a dispatching center, not 911, Einhorn said. Both Labriola and Einhorn said there is an element of east-side, west-side distrust in the whole command center debate, too.

Einhorn said while the west side of the county would have gotten a $36 million “gigantic” building, Will County 911 was considering converting an old University Park factory for an east side command center.

“It doesn’t seem hardly fair,” Einhorn said.

Steve Figved, chief administrator of Will County 911, could not be reached for comment.