Leaders in county, city say dispatch changes shouldn't impact residents

BERNALILLO — City of Rio Rancho and Sandoval County officials say the transition to the county’s new dispatch center should be a seamless one that residents shouldn’t notice.

“Our dispatch status is fully functional, and we’re in the process of upgrading to a real-time crime center and upgrading a lot of our equipment,” Mayor Gregg Hull said.

He added the Rio Rancho dispatch center will provide full service for the county and some of its municipalities until the county’s dispatch center is online. When the county is online, he said, it will most likely take over Corrales, Bernalillo and any other municipalities the city currently provides for.

“Rio Rancho won’t see any changes at all. It’ll be operations as normal,” Hull said.

However, the county and city will continue to communicate if either needs help or if there is a question of jurisdiction.

“If everything goes exactly the way it should, it should be a seamless transition of service that nobody will even notice,” Hull said. “Everybody’s still going to be able to pick up the phone to dial 911 and get an operator.”

The change comes with the joint powers agreement (JPA) between the city and county.

“There will have to be a new agreement formed. The former JPA is going to be restructured because the existing JPA includes the city. The new JPA the county will have will not include the city,” Hull said.

With the change, the county and city will be two separate entities. County Manager Wayne Johnson also says the priority is a smooth shift to the city’s urban and the county’s rural dispatch.

“Sandoval County used to have its own dispatch in Rio Rancho, and there may have been some other ones, but they consolidated back in 2004. As part of that, they created a joint powers agreement organization, and so there was an initial JPA that was signed in 2004,” Johnson said.

The JPA changed in 2015, according to Johnson.

“From 2004 up until 2015, at the end of the year, any vacancy savings as far as salaries got swept into Rio Rancho’s general fund. That was switched to go to a capital fund. So that has been the way that’s operated since 2015. The whole time it was kind of operated as if it were a division of Rio Rancho when it was actually a joint powers organization with its own governance, board, etc.,” he said.

Johnson claims the JPA was not followed well and the county objected to that.

“Before I was county manager, even thought about becoming county manager here in Sandoval, I’d heard about issues with Sandoval dispatch, mainly from rural communities,” he said.

He said with the sheer volume of calls coming from Rio Rancho — which takes up a majority of the county’s population at more than 100,000 residents — this was “understandable.”

“It’s understandable, even if it was unintentional, why they would focus more on the Rio Rancho population, because that’s what they do every day. ... So, we had some service issues that were not being addressed very well and not very transparently with the members,” he said.

Over time, the county and city went back and forth on the subject, but things came to a head in November 2023, when the city gave notice of termination of its participation in the JPA.

In a Nov. 17, 2023, letter to the county, Bernalillo, Corrales and Santa Ana Pueblo signed by City Manager Matt Geisel, Hull, all city council members, Deputy City Manager Peter Wells and the city attorney, the city said it succeeded in seeking exemption from the “Enhanced 911 Requirements” rule. It states there was an “impasse” reached between the JPA members.

It offered individual service to the rural areas should they want to have services provided by the city.

The termination from the JPA will go into effect June 30.

Johnson stated this created some issues because Rio Rancho was the fiscal agent of the contract.

“The JPA itself doesn’t contemplate exit of the fiscal agent from the organization,” Johnson said.

To remedy this, county commissioners passed an amendment to the JPA in December. All other members passed the amendment as well, making the county the fiscal agent beginning July 1.

The hope is the new agreement with Rio Rancho as its own entity will improve service.

“Ideally, it improves service by allowing Rio Rancho to focus on Rio Rancho and allowing the the SCRECC, which is made up of rural communities throughout Sandoval County, to focus on rural and small communities,” Johnson said.

He said members from the county would make up different boards to ensure everything runs smoothly. Johnson also said the county and city will remain communicative through the process.

The county announced Feb. 3 it is beginning to hire for the dispatch center.