Moments later, she took a call from a parent whose child was threatening to kill themselves and talked down a man who wanted to beat his neighbor with a baseball bat.
In addition to managing incoming calls and information across seven screens, Chinnery listened to the fire and medical radios, while another dispatcher, Leslie Brown, communicated on the law radio.
WESCOM Manager Esther Click says the dispatch center serves as both 911 and 411 in Walla Walla, and the expectation for anyone calling — emergency or not — is that someone will answer.
When a medical call came in at the same time as an emergency call, Chinnery muted her microphone to speak on the medical radio, dispatching ambulances without missing details the emergency caller shared in the meantime.
At other times, she answered a caller’s questions about police escorts for a memorial procession, forwarded paperwork for a stolen motorcycle on to dispatchers in Benton County, helped police locate a group frantically searching for a patient who escaped an assisted living center, and let an HOA group into the police building to use the meeting room after hours.
Walla Walla Emergency Services Communications Manager Esther Click said the dispatchers fill the roles of both 911 and 411 in Walla Walla, and the expectation for anyone calling — emergency or not — is that someone will answer.
Click is exploring the option of a two-tenths of 1% sales tax in Walla Walla to fund the hiring of three additional dispatchers and to upgrade radio equipment, changes she said are needed to continue to provide this service in Walla Walla.
As part of the proposal, the county is looking for committee members to draft the "for" and "against" statements that will appear in the voter’s pamphlet along with the E-911 sales tax proposal.
Residents who are interested must provide their name, mailing address, email address and phone number to the Commissioners’ Office and indicate whether they are for or against.
This information can be emailed to wwcocommissioners@wwcowa.gov or taken in person to 314 W. Main St. Room 203. The deadline to participate is noon Monday, April 28.
The proposal has support from the Walla Walla County Board of Commissioners and is on track to go before voters in the primary election this August, if deadlines are met to get it on the ballot.
At least 23 counties in Washington use an emergency communications sales tax of 0.2% or 0.1% to fund E-911 services. WESCOM is considering the 0.2%, which equates to two cents on a $10 purchase.
WESCOM is currently funded primarily through user fees, or money paid by the fire and law enforcement agencies that WESCOM serves: Walla Walla Police, College Place Police, Walla Walla County Sheriff, Walla Walla Fire Department Stations No. 1 & 2, College Place Fire Department, and Walla Walla County Fire Districts 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8.
“At the end, it isn't providing enough funding for us to operate efficiently, and it's taking money away from their organizations, which also impacts their ability to operate efficiently,” Click said.
With 0.2%, WESCOM would have collected $3.5 million in 2024. By comparison, the current user fees bring in about $2.6 million.
Some counties use the sales tax collection to pay for specific capital projects, and some use it to finance their operations entirely.
Click said she hopes it will reduce or replace user fees here in Walla Walla, so those funds can go back to local fire and law enforcement agencies.
“That's a good amount of money for us to be able to operate, staff up, upgrade our equipment, and put money aside into reserves so that we're able to update equipment as it comes to its end of life, instead of waiting for it to break, or just waiting and hoping that it's not going to die on us,” she said.
Upgrades
WESCOM fielded 83,766 calls in 2024. About 72% of those were nonemergency calls, while 28% were emergency calls to 911. Together, those calls led to 57,378 written logs, or calls for service.
Click said she wants to be able to hire three additional dispatchers, which would give the center enough employees to have three dispatchers per shift.
Currently, if only two people are scheduled and one leaves for their required break, all the radios and incoming calls are left to one person to manage, Click said.
The sales tax funds would also allow WESCOM to save for needed radio equipment upgrades, which could total $1 million.
“Most of our radio equipment is end-of-life,” Click said during a tour of the building at the corner of Rose Street and Second Avenue. “We had two outages in the last year, and we were able to get things back up and running, but those really concern us. … There will be a time where it fails, and we won’t be able to get it back up.”
She also pointed out where Mill Creek runs along the basement walls and a drop in the floor where a sump pump clears standing water. The center’s radio consoles, internet and phone lines are vulnerable to natural disasters if there is a breach of Mill Creek or seismic activity along Hite Fault, Click said.
Relocating has been an ongoing conversation, and the county is looking for places the dispatch center could move to, or places where a new center could be built.
Click said the sales and use tax funds could eventually pay for new radio consoles and furniture in a new location.
The deadline to get the funding proposal prepared for the August ballot is Friday, May 2.
Click said there will be plenty of community education opportunities between then and Election Day to inform voters about the measure.
“The citizens really have to take a really strong look of what their expectations are of the services and the reliability they expect when they dial 911,” she said. “They obviously expect somebody to be there, but if we are constrained due to the amount of money that we have in our budgetary abilities, then there's going to be some times when we're not going to be able to answer as efficiently and be there as consistently as we would like.”
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