Glenview trustees agreed Oct. 1 to begin providing dispatch services for Wilmette police calls starting in 2025 and for fire calls beginning in 2026.
The Village Board voted unanimously as part of its consent agenda to make the nearby community’s emergency departments the 20th and 21st agencies in 15 towns served by Glenview dispatch services.
Brent Reynolds, director of public safety support services for Glenview, said the village has become the dispatch center for most of the North Shore.
“I would say that we cover a large majority,” Reynolds said. “With the addition of Wilmette, we’ll actually dispatch from Wilmette all the way up through Lake Bluff on the lake shore and Niles, Morton Grove and Glenview (on the west).”
The addition of Wilmette to Glenview’s stable of towns will not affect response times in any of the communities the village serves, he said.
Wilmette’s decision to move its dispatch services to Glenview is the result of the former community deciding to close their own dispatch center, Reynolds said.
“We will take on their police dispatch services (first),” he said. “It will still be Wilmette police responding, but we will be dispatching them in January of 2025. And in January of 2026, we will begin dispatching their Fire Department.”
Among the additional agencies Glenview serves are Grayslake police, Hainesville police, Highland Park police and fire, Lake Forest police and fire, Highwood police, Glencoe police and fire, Kenilworth police, Winnetka police, Northfield police and Lindenhurst police, according to the dispatch center website.
Glenview entered into a partnership with Wilmette in 2016 to begin providing computer-aided dispatch and records management and mobile and field reporting services, Reynolds said in a report to the board.
“This allowed for cost efficiencies in computer hardware, software, licensing, support and maintenance in the daily operations of the Wilmette police dispatch center,” he said.
Wilmette currently dispatches police calls out of its Police Department and outsources fire calls, Reynolds said.
The dispatch services Glenview will provide are similar to those it provides other communities, he said. Wilmette Village Board approved a 10-year agreement with Glenview on Sept. 19, Reynolds said.
The contract will cost $697,830 in the first year, according to a report to the board by Wilmette Village Manager Michael Braiman and Assistant Village Manager Erik Hallgren.
Glenview will provide a discount off the base price of $1,022,830 during the first year, because it will not provide fire calls until the following year, Braiman and Hallgren said. The cost will increase between 3.75 percent and 4 percent annually, they said.
The agreement will save Wilmette $6.6 million in dispatch operating costs over the next 10 years, Braiman and Hallgren said. It will also reduce the size of the village’s proposed new police station by about 1,700 square feet, they said.
The size reduction, made possible by eliminating dispatch operations, will save Wilmette between $725,000 and $1.1 million in construction costs, Braiman and Hallgren said.
The village currently provides 24-hour police and fire communications, including emergency and non-emergency police, fire and emergency medical services calls, they said.
Wilmette police calls are processed and dispatched directly from the police department, Braiman and Hallgren said. Calls for fire or EMS services are transferred to a secondary communications center, the Regional Emergency Dispatch Center in Northbrook, for processing and dispatching, they said.
Wilmette currently employs six full-time telecommunicators, one full-time supervisor, and a few part-time telecommunicators, Braiman and Hallgren said.
