In this Sept. 11, 2012, file photo, sunglasses reflect the computer screens in front of a Lewis County 911 Communications Center dispatcher as she takes a call during a Friday night shift. The center is located on the top floor of the Lewis County Courthouse.
Lewis County and Chehalis city leaders left a meeting last week with two very different versions of events — and plenty of unresolved tension over the Twin Cities’ future in the county’s 911 services agreement.
“In essence what (Chehalis Mayor) Dennis (Dawes) did was deliver the county an ultimatum that either they’re gonna get what they want or take their toys and go home,” County Commissioner Bobby Jackson said, recapping the meeting for his fellow commissioners on Tuesday. “This was not a friendly meeting. … It was an ultimatum. (County Manager) Erik (Martin) and I were caught flat-footed.”
Jackson referenced a meeting with Dawes on Aug. 29 to discuss 911 operations. Chehalis and Centralia currently receive 911 services from the county, but ongoing concerns have led them to explore the creation of an independent 911 center.
The meeting took place Aug. 29 at Chehalis City Hall. It was not considered a public meeting because no one governing body had a quorum of members in attendance.
Chehalis city manager Jill Anderson, Centralia Mayor Lee Coumbs and Centralia city manager Rob Hill were also at the meeting, as well as Chehalis council members Dr. Isaac Pope and Chad Taylor. Chief Mike Kytta, from Centralia’s Riverside Fire Authority, and RFA Commissioner Mike Tomasheck also attended.
Kytta and Coumbs did not return requests for comment.
Pope was unable to be reached for comment. All other attendees spoke with The Chronicle about the meeting. Members of the Twin Cities coalition described the discussion as cordial and professional, while county representatives characterized it as one side attacking the other while making demands.
City officials and leadership of their fire and law enforcement agencies have complained about service from the 911 center for years.
Chehalis, Centralia and the RFA account for more than 57 percent of the user fees paid into the county 911 operation but do not have any actionable say over how the dispatch center is run or staffed. The imminent need for the county to overhaul its 911 infrastructure by replacing equipment and building a new dispatch facility has intensified the stakes for parties on both sides of the issue.
“What kind of organization do you know where someone pays more than 50 percent and has no say?” Dawes said Tuesday. “We would like to work out some kind of arrangement to have some kind of input of who the manager is up there and how things are done. We would like to work with the county and look at other models and would like to know in two weeks if (the county) is interested in looking at this or not. I don’t care what we look at, the way it is right now is not working out in our opinion.”
By the account of county officials, Dawes led a strident meeting arranged for one purpose — to put the county on notice that its biggest contributors are preparing to walk away from the 911 services pact if they’re not given more power. According to Martin, that would take the form of a 911 executive board giving Chehalis and Centralia more of a voice in the county-wide interlocal agreement.
“Right away, that was the first thing Dennis said,” Martin said. “It was implied that if they didn’t, they would be looking at going down the path of the study they’ve done for a separate (911 center). Dennis said he would like an answer within two weeks from the county commissioners. … We didn’t do most of the talking.”
Jackson saw the cities’ proposal as an attempt to wrest away the power to control 911 center decisions.
The two cities and the RFA would also like discuss moving the operating budget for 911 services out of the Emergency Services category in the county budget into a standalone enterprise fund. Doing so would restrict how funds in that account could be used or transferred and would afford more control over the balance to an oversight committee.
“They want an (executive) board, but what they really want to do is control the entire situation,” Jackson said. “There was no avenue open for us to even discuss.”
Asked about the two-week deadline, Dawes said it was not the do-or-die threat the county had taken it to be.
Anderson, Hill and Taylor each remembered Dawes’ request, which came at the conclusion of the meeting, to be a desire that the county inform them whether or not they’re willing to engage in discussions about how to change the current governance structure, not if it is going to change.
Dawes also took offense to the assertion by Jackson during Tuesday’s Board of County Commissioners meeting that Chehalis representatives had spoken ill of county Emergency Management Director Steve Mansfield, who served as Lewis County Sheriff from 2005-2015.
“The City of Chehalis did not bad-mouth anyone in that meeting,” Dawes said. “I don’t think it’s quite accurate that way. We said we did not want to discuss anything in the past. That it was time to go forward. It’s unfortunate they feel that way, unfortunate they want to look at the past. We wanted to look at the future.”
The county’s representatives had a very different takeaway, which they shared with the BOCC during the Board’s weekly director’s update with Martin. Much of their ire was directed at the Chehalis contingent, not Centralia or the RFA.
“They took an opportunity to complain about Steve Mansfield. The indication I got was that they’d rather deal with somebody else,” Jackson said. “They let us know that basically they want what they want. In spite of the fact that Steve has done a tremendous job over the last two years in cleaning up situations up there and getting things back on track, they’re not satisfied with that, but they can’t tell us why.”
Tensions between Mansfield, former Lewis County 911 Manager Dave Anderson and the police and fire chiefs of the Twin Cities have simmered for years. Much of the criticism of how the county dispatch center is staffed and run stems from public and private confrontations between the two sides.
Centralia Chief of Police Carl Nielsen and Chehalis Fire Chief Ken Cardinale, two of the most vocal critics of the way the county 911 system is run, declined to comment on the meeting or what they had heard from those who attended.
Mansfield said in an interview that he is operations-focused and reluctant to speak to political matters. However, he said he was open to Jackson’s suggestion that he be included in further discussions, and added that the criticism didn’t bother him.
“I have no problem attending any of those meetings,” Mansfield said. “I don’t give a rip what someone else says. It’s not factually based.”
When presented with the response from Dawes that the two-week timeline was a request for continued conversation, not a deadline to overhaul the agreement, county officials said they appreciated the clarification.
“That’s encouraging,” Martin said.
Added Commissioner Edna Fund: “That means we’re on the same wavelength.”
Still, the tone of the August meeting is sure to make future discussion fraught.
“I didn’t feel that Mayor Dawes was disrespectful, but he was very passionate,” Martin said. “He was not interested in other solutions, which was troubling.”
Significant sticking points remain as the stakeholders continue to work on the issue. At one point, Jackson suggested that the managers — Martin, Anderson and Hill — take the lead on further communication, to which Dawes strongly objected, saying he would not be “locked out,” according to Jackson.
According to Lewis County, 66 percent of 911 calls come from the jurisdictions served by Centralia and Chehalis responders, for which Jackson said the Twin Cities don’t want to “accept responsibility.”
A study completed in June by ADCOMM Engineering Company regarding the feasibility of a Twin Cities dispatch center estimated the total call volume of the four agencies to have been about 35,000 in 2017, with the number of calls serviced closer to 30,000. The same study calculated the expected yearly call volume for Lewis County to be about 82,000. Mansfield said his dispatch operation received about 67,000 calls last year.
The earliest Centralia and Chehalis could opt out of the current interlocal agreement is June of 2019, six months before it is set to expire. Agencies from across Lewis County signed onto the new agreement, negotiated by Mansfield, Kytta and Nielsen, earlier this year.
At the time, both Kytta and Nielsen praised it as a step forward in a long-strained partnership.
“Chehalis considered the current ILA a stepping stone to the next one where we would be looking towards having more formal decision-making input,” Anderson said. “Our preference would be to work with Lewis County, but the existing structure isn’t working.”
The fact that the Twin Cities are raising objections so soon after the new pact is a sign that the conflict is personality-based, not structural, Mansfield said. If the cities are set on an executive board structure, they have the ability to create that within the current document, he said. Likewise, the agreement gives users the ability to change how the 911 center is funded.
“We really need to look at all the work that’s gone into this. I’m not so sure that they’ve all read this,” Mansfield said. “It demands participation in the updates and changes. This is a critical partnership, and quite frankly they haven’t really given it a chance to let it work. … If they’re telling you they don’t have any say in it, they’re telling you out of ignorance or they’re not being honest with you.”
In principle, Lewis County officials said they’re willing to continue conversation about an executive board and other ideas mentioned by the cities, such as a utility-based payment structure in which all users pay the same base fee, with extra costs based on call volume. At present, what a department pays in each year is determined by call volume.
“It’s drastic the amount of calls that come to Centralia and Chehalis versus all the small areas,” Martin said.
But that willingness to discuss new ideas will require a change in approach from Chehalis, they said. County commissioner Gary Stamper said future discussions should involve the other departments from throughout the county that are part of the agreement, who stand to bear a huge financial burden if the Twin Cities leave the pact and might object to handing them more power over 911 decisions.
Mansfield said he’s already begun planning for the adjustments that will need to take place if Centralia and Chehalis pull out, acknowledging that the remaining agencies will be stuck with a higher price tag.
“That’s part of it,” he said. “I still have to have a room, I still have to have equipment, I still have to have infrastructure. … They’re still going to have a first-rate organization. They’re still going to have a great service.”
Jackson said the timeline presented by Dawes remained a roadblock.
“I don’t want to do it under the conditions they put out there,” he said. “This is not going to be an easy road for us. Having an ultimatum delivered to us didn’t set the tone very well. … At this moment, if we have a second meeting, I think there’s going to have to be some understanding going into that what they have demanded is unacceptable.”
County commissioners decided their official response, a letter to be drafted by Martin, will say exactly that. Dawes said that he wasn’t sure why his request would take more than two weeks to answer.
“Let him know that we are willing to continue talking, but at this moment we have more questions than answers,” Jackson said. “Two weeks is not an adequate amount of time.”
