“Not only is it inefficient to have 48 different call centers (in the county),” FitzGerald says. “It also means sometimes people call the wrong one and sometimes it means you get transferred and put on hold. We want to avoid that. For the customer, they’re not going to see a difference because they are going to make their call and it is going to go to this consolidated 9-1-1 center among those three cities, and then it is going to be dispatched by the operator to whatever the appropriate police or fire department is.”

FitzGerald says this consolidation alone is expected to save half a million dollars a year. He says towns are spending too much money replicating dispatch services and wants to reduce the number of 9-1-1 call centers in Cuyahoga County to 10 over the next 10 years.