The City of Seaford is considering shutting down its 911 dispatch center in an effort to save money.
The Seaford City Council plans to discuss transferring local emergency calls from its 911 center to Sussex County’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in Georgetown.
“It has been in our budget - sort of crosshairs - for, I’ll say, quite some time. It’s a very expensive department to run. And to keep it fully operational and up to par there’s an incredible investment that’s needed going forward into the next few years,” said Seaford Mayor David Genshaw. He says it currently costs $650,000 to run the City’s dispatch center and that number is expected to increase 19% next year.
Genshaw notes that Seaford’s 911 service duplicates what’s offered county-wide at the EOC and every other Sussex County municipality and town except Seaford already uses the county service,“So the idea came up that maybe we need to have some conversations with the County and what would it look like if we were to transfer our 911 over to them.”
Genshaw says the topic will be discussed at next week’s City Council meeting on August 27, 2019. Public comment is welcome.
