Trumbull County 911 has changed some of its procedures for which Brookfield Police Chief Aaron Kasiewicz is thankful, but Brookfield Fire Chief David Masirovits is unhappy with an unexplained “drastic” increase in his bill from 911.
While county officials deal with issues such as a lack of dispatchers, problems with the computer-aided dispatch system and whether or not to move the center to a new building, Kasiewicz’s issues are how the police department has been billed and what it is being billed for. There has been little consistency in why the police department is being billed for certain calls on some occasions but not on others, and there even have been instances where the department was billed for notifications that were never delivered to a policeman, Kasiewicz said.
The problems are not insignificant because the department is billed $4,531 a month. That figure is based on the department’s 2021 calls, which is another problem Kasiewicz has.
911 has agreed to base the charge on an average of the number of calls over the last three years, something Kasiewicz said he is happier with. However, what constitutes a billable call – a CAD in emergency jargon – has been in dispute. Kasiewicz said he doesn’t think he should be charged when he tells a dispatcher where he is, an officer on the road is requested to go to the police station or the department is informed that the fire department has been dispatched and the police are unable to respond with the firefighters. Kasiewicz, who is reviewing the billed calls, said 911 has agreed to exclude “unnecessary calls” from the three-year average, but each side has to agree on what can be excluded.
County officials also have changed their procedures concerning the use of radio channels in emergencies and agreed to pay the software licensing fees for police mobile data terminals, the computers carried in police vehicles, Kasiewicz said.
Masirovits said he also has had issues with being charged for instances such as asking off-duty personnel to man the station when the duty staff is out on calls, but he does not have a breakdown of what calls are being billed. Masirovits said the county fire chiefs have a committee that deals with 911 issues and he is not sure what they have discussed. The fire department pays $1,407 a month, which went up from $660 a month in 2024, said township Fiscal Officer Dena McMullin.
