Fort Erie fire service on hunt for dispatcher

Fort Erie is on the hunt for a new provider of fire dispatch services.

The need for a new provider has come after town council voted Monday to terminate its agreement with City of St. Catharines to provide the service. Council will have two years — the timeline provided in the agreement between the two municipalities.

The agreement between St. Catharines and surrounding municipalities in Niagara, including Fort Erie, was renewed in December of last year.

According to a fire and emergency services staff report authored by fire Chief Ed Melanson, a “substantial number of changes” have been made by the Fort Erie Fire Department that were meant to create efficiencies. Some of those changes included the disposal of trucks from the fleet, a realignment of response districts, changes to response run cards and the replacement of an analogue repeater system backup.

St. Catharines fire dispatch made a change that sees it piggybacking on the Niagara Regional Police P25 digital system and has been “very aggressive in attempting to coerce the other municipalities” to make the same switch.

In his report, Melanson said it would cost the town $1.2 million to replace current equipment such as portable radios, repeaters and pagers. He added that tests with the digital system failed to show any significant improvements over the current system.

In addition to the $1.2 million for equipment, the St. Catharines department would also increase the amount Fort Erie would pay for the dispatch service by three per cent annually. Costs would be $96,076 in 2019, $98,958 in 2020, $101,927 in 2021 and $104,985 in 2022. By terminating the agreement, the cost for services in 2021 and 2022 would “lower significantly to an estimated cost of $75,000 per year,” Melanson’s report stated.

Council approved the report. Melanson said afterwards that there were no problems in the relationship with the St. Catharines department, rather that it boiled down to simple economics.

“We have had an outstanding relationship with St. Catharines fire dispatch for approximately 30 years,” he said. “Our need to ensure that Fort Erie Fire is dispatched in an economically feasible manner using the system we currently have supersedes this.”