Emergency Facility Gets Preliminary OK

The City Council has given preliminary approval to join with two nearby cities in creating a new emergency dispatch center to hook up with a new countywide system.

By creating a jointly run dispatch center with Los Alamitos and Cypress, each city will save about $60,000, Seal Beach City Manager Keith Till said. The center will enable the cities to join the new 800-megahertz countywide emergency dispatch system.

Seal Beach will finance its $762,000 cost of buying new equipment for the 800-megahertz system over the next 15 years. Including finance charges, the new system will cost the city $1.3 million.

The new system will link all police, fire and public works agencies in the county to one network. It is considered crucial to coordinate emergency agencies as the county’s population grows. The old system is so overloaded that it often takes several minutes to make radio contact between jurisdictions.