{"id":51021,"date":"2020-10-13T00:49:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T06:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-proposes-increasing-dispatch-usage-fees-for-agencies\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:54:08","slug":"cortez-proposes-increasing-dispatch-usage-fees-for-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/cortez-proposes-increasing-dispatch-usage-fees-for-agencies\/","title":{"rendered":"Cortez proposes increasing dispatch usage fees for agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The city of Cortez is proposing that agencies that use its dispatch center pay additional fees to cover the cost of services such as payroll, benefits and human resources for dispatch center employees starting in 2022. The dispatch center and its technology are funded through fees to the agencies that use it, including the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the Cortez Fire Protection District, the Southwest Ambulance Service and the Mancos Marshal\u2019s Office.<\/span>The Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The city of Cortez is proposing that agencies that use its dispatch center pay additional fees to cover the center\u2019s cost for employee services such as payroll, benefits and human resources starting in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a best practice to do so,\u201d Cortez Finance Director Ben Burkett said.<\/p>\n

The dispatch center and its technology are funded through fees to the agencies that use it, including the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office, the Cortez Fire Protection District, the Southwest Ambulance Service and the Mancos Marshal\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

Each user\u2019s fee depends on the number of calls it has, or its percentage of the total use of the dispatch service.<\/p>\n

Burkett and John Dougherty, the Cortez city manager, estimate the total costs of the new payroll and human resource fees to be $18,500 per year, which would also be divided based on call percentage.<\/p>\n

Dougherty said the dispatch center is costly for the city to cover because of its high turnover rate. The hiring process and the training process for new dispatchers is expensive, he said.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Cortez general fund incurs these costs \u2013 they haven\u2019t been divided among the agencies that use the dispatch service, Burkett said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe city of Cortez is still going to be paying the bulk of the costs,\u201d Burkett said. The city makes up 35% to 40% of the dispatch calls, according to the finance director.<\/p>\n

Burkett said the city would start charging organizations that use its services in other departments as well, such as water and refuse.<\/p>\n

Impact on Mancos<\/div>\n

The town of Mancos and the Mancos Marshal\u2019s Office expressed concerns over the city of Cortez\u2019s proposal in a Town Board meeting Sept. 23.<\/p>\n

Heather Alvarez, town administrator for Mancos, met with Dougherty on Sept. 22 to discuss a proposal from the city of Cortez that agencies also pay rent for the dispatch center, totaling roughly $195,000 per year.<\/p>\n

The dispatch center is roughly 1,000 square feet.<\/p>\n

Alvarez said she told Dougherty in the \u201cfrank but friendly\u201d discussion that $195 per square foot is not an acceptable rent price for this area.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be cheaper to purchase another building rather than paying rent at this rate,\u201d Alvarez said in a phone interview Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Mancos pays anywhere from $54,000 to $65,000 per year for dispatch services. The proposed cost of rent would increase their bill to about $78,000 per year for dispatch services, Goodall said.<\/p>\n

The Marshal\u2019s Office is funded through the town of Mancos general budget. The more money that goes into services like dispatch, the harder it is for Mancos to pay for more staffing as the town grows, Goodall said.<\/p>\n

The Marshal\u2019s Office might need to cut funding for out-of-town community policing trainings, which would undercut Goodall\u2019s efforts to increase the professionalism of the agency, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has to be a more feasible way,\u201d Goodall said. \u201cI can understand a certain amount of rent, and that there are overhead costs, but I find it hard to believe there is $195,000 of overhead for 11 employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

The current contract between the town of Mancos and the city of Cortez for dispatch services prohibits the city from charging for costs such as rent, Alvarez said. And Mancos residents pay fees on their telephone and cell phone bills to access 911.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis attempt to use funds specifically allocated for emergency services to balance the city of Cortez budget is unacceptable to the town of Mancos,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cWe oppose it, and we will continue to oppose it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alvarez said Dougherty told her he would do more research into what they discussed, but Dougherty has not contacted the town of Mancos about the proposal since Sept. 22.<\/p>\n

In a phone interview with The Journal on Wednesday, Dougherty and Burkett said they never proposed charging rent.<\/p>\n

Dougherty said it was \u201cnot clear\u201d where Alvarez and Goodall got the $195,000 number, but Sheriff Steve Nowlin had the same numbers as Alvarez in a county commissioners meeting Sept. 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cMancos\u2019 increase will be minimal, about $1,000 more,\u201d Dougherty said.<\/p>\n

The Cortez city manager did not respond to emails, calls or text messages about his conversation with Mancos officials as of Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Nowlin also expressed concerns about the additional dispatch costs in the county commissioners meeting on Sept. 15.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we fight the $190,000 (increase),\u201d County Commissioner Larry Don Suckla said.<\/p>\n

The county gave 10 acres to the city of Cortez for county assets, including operating a dispatch center free of charge to the county, which the city then sold to Osprey, Suckla said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is wrong, there was an agreement over the 10 acres,\u201d Suckla said.<\/p>\n

Nowlin said that for less than $200,000 he would hire four dispatchers that would dispatch for the Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are looking at separating from the city and doing something else,\u201d Nowlin said.<\/p>\n

ehayes@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

officials raise concerns about cost to residents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[318,13,28,51],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez-municipal-government","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-police"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87879,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51021\/revisions\/87879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51021"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}