Nelson’s fire dispatch will be outsourced to the the Regional District of Fraser Fort George (RDFFG) by the end of the year – a move designed to improve efficiency and reduce overtime costs.
Nelson City Councillors gave the green light to negotiate the details of a contract with the RDFFG for the provision of fire dispatch services during the June 3 council meeting.
Nelson Fire and Rescue Services (NFRS) currently operates fire dispatch in-house, but increasing call volumes and staffing shortages have made dispatch operations unsustainable.
According to a civic document, the transition to outsourced dispatch would help alleviate overtime burdens on staff, who historically have been required to come in off shift to cover fire dispatch, which pulls them away from their families and personal lives.
Last year, each Nelson firefighter incurred about six weeks of overtime, in addition to their full-time hours – mostly to cover dispatch when on-shift crews required a two-person response.
Staff looked at several different potential providers, including an internal option which would have seen the expansion of Nelson Police’s dispatch services, and neighbouring districts such as Kelowna.
However, the RDFFG was identified as the best and most cost-effective choice.
“We reached out to Kelowna, Fraser Fort George, as well as looked at what it would cost for police to operate dispatch for us. And Fraser Fort George was the more cost-effective option by a significant margin,” said Nelson Fire Chief Jeff Hebert.
“We had discussions with other municipalities that run both police and fire dispatching, and the challenges that we ran into were that fire and police CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) systems don’t talk to each other. We’d need to run independent CAD, which is very cost-prohibitive, and the staffing increases required to meet the fire dispatch requirements made police not a viable option.”
The RDFFG already provides fire dispatch services to fire departments in the Regional District of Central Kootenay, which Hebert notes ensures local synergy as dispatchers are already familiar with the area.
“They dispatch our mutual aid partners. They already have our GIS information, and they have sent people here physically to learn the area for the regional district.”
The transition will also save the fire service $61,000 in its total operating costs over three years.
The new fire dispatch service will cost up to $211,00 per year from 2026-2028, based on 2,000 fire dispatch calls annually. Most of these costs will be covered by savings from less overtime pay for staff.
There will also be a one-time set up cost of $370,000, although NFRS expects to secure $270,000 in grants from the Union of BC Municipalities for NG9-1-1 which will reduce the one time fee to about $100,000.
This $100,000 covers things like radio dispatch equipment and upgrades to fire station alert systems, which aren’t covered by the grant.
Council approved Hebert’s request to negotiate details of the contract with the RDFFG, with the fire service aiming to have contract negotiations complete by July and the transition of services by December 2025.
The proposed contract will go back to council for approval in July.
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