Cumberland County and the City of Fayetteville have failed to merge their 911 call centers on three separate occasions since 2007. Months of debate and a proposal developed by local emergency services leaders may prove the fourth time’s a charm. 

On Monday, the Fayetteville-Cumberland Liaison Committee moved to present the joint 911 call center proposal to the Fayetteville City Council and the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners for their consideration.

The proposal would consolidate the city and county call centers into a single center at 500 Executive Place, the county’s current location. Operational and renovation costs would be shared equally. 

No services or employees would be lost in the consolidation, Stoney Point Fire Department Fire Chief Freddy Johnson Sr. said in his presentation to the committee.

The proposal was developed by a group that included Johnson, city fire and police chiefs and the managers of the county and city 911 call centers, and representatives from the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, volunteer fire departments, and Cape Fear Valley Emergency Medical Services. 

All agree: A single center would put public safety and health first, maximize tax dollars and ensure emergencies are responded to without call transfers. 

The proposal leaves elected officials to determine who would govern the 911 call center.

“Everybody agrees that this is the best path,” Mayor Mitch Colvin said following the presentation to the liaison committee. “The ‘how’ is the difficult part.”

The proposal offered two options for the city council and the county board of commissioners to consider: Create a joint emergency communications board, or select a single entity to govern the center. 

Johnson said Watauga County and the City of Boone consolidated 911 operations under a single entity control model; Boone pays Watauga County an annual fee to cover the extra costs of managing the city’s 911 calls.  

“I was a member of all these previous attempts that started back in 2007,” Johnson said to the liaison committee. “There was a single element that drove it apart, and that was the governance piece. Who’s going to be in charge?”

The city council and county commissioners will receive the presentation in October. Both are expected to recommend who should be the center’s governing body. Those recommendations will be brought to another city-county liaison committee meeting for discussion. An independent integrator hired by the city and county will then help bring together a single plan.

“We need to keep in mind that, when it comes to the community, they don’t care if it’s the city overseeing it or the county,” Courtney Banks-McLaughlin, city council member and member of the county-city liaison committee, said at the meeting. “They just want to make sure that, when they dial 911, someone shows up to their rescue.”

The proposal recommends Lisa Reid, manager of Fayetteville’s 911 call center, to serve as director of a consolidated center. It also proposes an advisory board made up of elected officials from the city and county, public safety agency leaders, and representatives from the Fayetteville Fire Department and other emergency services.

Calls for a consolidated 911 call center come as Fayetteville is outgrowing its emergency communications center on the second floor of City Hall. Cumberland County constructed its current center in 2022, and left room for growth, the county previously told CityView.

CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.