Joint communications center to improve Iowa City police and Johnson Co. sheriff's work together

On a recent Friday night, Iowa City police officers and Johnson County sheriff's deputies worked together on a car chase.

But because the city and county have separate radio systems, the officers and deputies couldn't talk to each other and had to instead have dispatchers relay information for them, said Nancy Sereduck, Iowa City's emergency communications supervisor.

“It's cumbersome at best,” she said.

That is to change with the opening of a joint emergency communications center, which will serve all of the public safety departments and emergency medical personnel in the county.

But they, and the public, will have to wait several months longer than originally planned.

When ground was broken on the facility last fall off Melrose Ave. just west of Highway 218, the expectation was that the center would be fully operational in January 2010.

Now, plans call for dispatchers to move in July 1, with the joint system up and running in October.

There is no real root cause for the delay, said Mike Sullivan, the center's executive director. But if he could point to one thing, it was a late change to the location of one of the radio towers. Everything was in place to build one at Iowa City's fire station on Lower Muscatine Road, he said, when the Federal Aviation Administration decided a runway extension project would put the tower too close to the Iowa City Municipal Airport.

A new site was found on the east side of town, he said.

The building itself also was a bit behind schedule, but it is now finished and Sullivan and the county's emergency management agency are moved in.

Emergency personnel are excited for it to go live. Currently, there are two primary communications systems - one run for Iowa City and one for the county. Communication between the systems is limited, and radio coverage is often spotty.

The joint system will make a big difference on everything from emergencies to garden-variety public safety calls, officials said

Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek struggled to find the words to say how beneficial it would have been to have a joint system during last year's historic flood or the destructive tornado that ripped through Iowa City in 2006.

“I don't know that I could even describe how helpful it would have been,” he said.

Iowa City's Sereduck said it will essentially be a 911 center, with nonemergency calls, like a barking dog, being primarily taken by the individual agencies. That should help save vital seconds in emergencies, she said.

The center is run as a stand-alone entity with Sullivan as executive director and a policy board made up of representatives from Coralville, Iowa City, North Liberty and Johnson County.

Sullivan said current estimates put the cost of the building at $4.3 million and the communications equipment at $11 million, minus about $3 million in grants.

Property taxes help pay for the center. This fiscal year, the rate is set at 48 cents per $1,000 of taxable value.