ANAHEIM : City Won’t Contract for Fire Dispatchers

Rejecting a proposal to privately contract for some of its emergency services, the City Council this week approved the hiring of 18 Fire Department dispatchers to staff a communications center.

It will cost $1.2 million to pay for the positions.

As approved by the council on Tuesday, Anaheim will pay 45% of that total, while the other four cities in the North Net Fire Communications Center--Buena Park, Fullerton, Garden Grove and Orange--will share the rest of the cost.

Anaheim Fire Chief Jeff Bowman said in a staff report that privatizing emergency dispatch services would provide scant savings and could hurt employee morale.

Anaheim, which will take over management of the North Net system this summer from the city of Orange, was considering contracting for dispatch services. Instead, it will hire 17 dispatchers now employed by the city of Orange, plus one new employee.

A city study found that a private contract for dispatch service would save the city $58,331 a year.

But the privatization proposal set off protests from members of the Orange County Employees Assn., who said the move would create a high turnover rate because dispatchers would lose a host of city benefits.