Red Deer City Council has decided not to pursue consolidating EMS and Police dispatch.

In the 6-3 decision, Council decided they would rather focus on current initiatives.

Mayor Tara Veer says in 2015 the City of Red Deer implemented a non-emergency call taking program during operating hours, which was extended last year and helped improve service levels.

“We actually extended the non-emergency complaint line past 4:30. Obviously it makes sense, that’s when citizens are at home and when they have calls that they want to submit to RCMP so we extended that and it’s actually diverted about 50% of the calls from what would otherwise have gone to an emergency line.”

Veer adds combining both police and EMS dispatch is something that could be looked at again in the future.

“What Council recognized tonight is that at budget we established a Protective Services Division to ensure the left hand and the right hand in terms of all of our protective services are talking to each other. There may very well be even more consolidations on dispatch in the future, but Council didn’t have enough information tonight in order to action that.”
 
Right now Fire and EMS dispatch are consolidated with the RCMP paying for emergency dispatch and the City picking up the tab for the non-emergencies.