Vivian Sade, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

Allen County Council members are getting nervous because they have yet to be contacted about the funding of a proposed multimillion-dollar project to update the city-county 911 call center.

Some are afraid they will be pressed to make a decision with no time to explore funding options. But the president of the board who oversees the 911 call center said any delays in moving the project forward could affect public safety.

“It appears that they plan to do this project with no funding in place,” County Councilman Darren Vogt, R-3rd, said Wednesday. “What I’m afraid of is that we will be put into a box and then hear, `This is what you need to do.’ ”

The 911 call center is under the direction of the Consolidated Communications Partnership Board and the Multi Agency Communications Board. The groups are in negotiations with Motorola for final pricing of the new system.

Early estimates have put the cost between $15 million and $20 million.

The cost for the system’s hardware – referred to as the backbone – will be split equally between Allen County and the city of Fort Wayne and could be about $4.5 million each, said County Council President Larry Brown, R-4th.

The city-county contract for the 911 call center stipulates that Fort Wayne pay 70 percent of the operating costs, while the county covers 30 percent.

Each entity will pay their share of the new radios, and the county’s could be about $3.5 million, Brown said.

According to a timeline shown at a recent meeting, the Consolidated Communications Partnership Board wants to award the contract in early July, Brown said. The council meets once a month and its next meeting is June 21.

“Someone has a lot of work to do,” Brown said.

The Consolidated Communications Partnership Board needs to share with the council a full budget and funding plan that includes the call center’s operating budget, Brown said.

“We started asking for this a year ago,” Brown said. “We tried.”

Fort Wayne City Council also seems to be in the dark.

City Council President Tom Smith, R-1st, said he is frustrated that the council has not heard anything on the matter.

“We know it’s coming, we know it’s important, we know it’s costly – all things we’ve heard,” Smith said. “But we have had no briefings or presentations.”

Smith said even though the council meets weekly, it still takes weeks to render a decision.

Smith also fears being forced into a situation where the council is told it’s an urgent need and must be done right away, leaving no time for investigation or planning.

“You really start to feel like you’ve been manipulated,” Smith said.

Fort Wayne Fire Chief Pete Kelly, president of the Consolidated Communications Partnership Board, said the board realizes the project will have to be put on the fast track. It expects to finish negotiations this week, he said.

The upgrading of the radio system will take 12 to 18 months and the board hopes to test the system in the fall of 2013, he said. If it doesn’t happen by then, the testing must wait until spring 2014. That’s because the system must be tested while there are leaves on the trees, he said, to make sure the signals are getting proper coverage.

But the more crucial point, he said, is what could be a public safety issue should the project be delayed.

“The radio system is ending theof its life cycle,” Kelly said. “As time passes, the possibility of system failure increases.

“No one has been working harder than the CCP board to try and push this thing forward. We have not been able to disclose any information because we were in the midst of negotiations.”

There have also been a series of delays beyond the board’s control, Kelly said.

“We have been discussing this for two years,” Kelly said. Both city and county officials were included in many of those discussions, he said.

Kelly said he plans to meet with all city and county officials and brief them once he is free to give the details.

A decision will be announced at the group’s meeting next Wednesday, he said.

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