Excerpts from theChicagoTribune.com:

Wauconda plans to save more than $700,000 a year by closing its dispatch center and hiring Lake Zurich to handle police calls and overnight detainees, Wauconda Village Administrator Doug Maxeiner said.

Meanwhile, the Wauconda Fire District will pay slightly more each year for Lake Zurich to handle its dispatch, but expected those costs to rise anyway, Fire District Chief Mike Wahl said.

The Lake Zurich Village Board voted unanimously earlier this month to provide police dispatch to Wauconda for an estimated $222,000 a year, to house overnight arrestees for $75 each per night, and to provide dispatch to the fire district for an estimated $122,000 a year.

Wauconda Village Board and the Wauconda Fire District Board approved the contracts earlier this year. The fees are based on the estimated number of calls the Wauconda police and fire departments handle each year and could rise based on increases in Lake Zurich police and fire salaries.

For Wauconda, closing its dispatch center made perfect financial sense, Maxeiner said … as the village’s net cost to operate the center each year was more than $700,000.

With dispatch and overnight detainee costs, Wauconda will pay Lake Zurich just $225,000 a year, Maxeiner said.

Nonetheless, Wauconda residents needed a little convincing that Lake Zurich dispatchers would know their community well enough to dispatch emergency calls. “The technology is such that you do not have to know the community,” Maxeiner said. “The technology tells you where the calls are originating and exactly how to get there.”

Lake Zurich plans to begin offering dispatch services and overnight accommodations for detainees on May 11, after the new StarCom21 radio system is installed in the village’s dispatch center and Lake Zurich and Wauconda fire departments are linked technologically, Lake Zurich Police Chief Steve Husak said. StarCom21 is a new radio system undergoing the final phases of installation in the Lake Zurich area.

“We are getting the radios programmed and encrypted,” he said. “Hopefully, by May 11 we will have them up and running in Lake Zurich. Then we would be able to take on dispatch for them from here.”

Wahl said technology available at the Lake Zurich dispatch center is three times as great as the GPS technology available on most cellphones.

Our [current] dispatchers don’t necessarily live in Wauconda either. They get to know things the average person doesn’t know, but I suspect after time the Lake Zurich dispatchers will get the same comfort level.”

The fire district had to select another dispatch center when Wauconda chose to close theirs, Wahl said, and given that the village would have increased its fees eventually anyway, Lake Zurich fees will be about the same.

“It’s probably a break-even for us overall,” Wahl said. “It costs a little extra, but we have not had a cost increase from the village for a couple of years. If we had stayed, there most likely would have been a slight increase, for which it would have been a wash.”

Tags: Fire District Chief Mike Wahl, Lake Zurich Fire Department, Lake Zurich Police Chief Steve Husak, Lake Zurich to dispatch for Wauconda, Wauconda Fire Department, Wauconda Fire Protection District, Wauconda looks into outsourcing 9-1-1 call center, Wauconda’s 911 center