MASON — Ingham County officials are moving ahead with a plan to make the county’s 911 call center a permanent part of the sheriff’s department, in line with Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth’s recommendation that it’s the best way forward for the staffing-challenged agency.
The sheriff’s department has been running the call center on an interim basis since last fall, and Wriggelsworth said he’s concluded it should be folded into his department, a complicated move he said would help address longstanding issues that include chronic overtime.
“This is a beast of a project,” Wriggelsworth said in a Jan. 22 news conference, noting it would increase the size of the sheriff’s office from about 170 employees to about 240.
The call center already is established as a county operation, and bringing it under the sheriff’s department’s leadership culture might help address some of its staffing issues, including oppressive work schedules, he said.
Ingham County Controller Gregg Todd said he supports that recommendation and believes there’s support for it among the county’s Board of Commissioners. The board is expected to vote on making the center part of the sheriff’s office and the creation of a new position to oversee operations on Feb. 10, he said.
“I think it’s a smart move,” Todd said.
Bradley Richman, executive director of the Capital City Labor Program, the union representing the center’s dispatchers, said the sheriff’s office “has certainly made inroads in righting the ship” since it began overseeing operations there last fall.
The 911 center has 35 full-time dispatchers but is budgeted for 52, he said. Five new full-time dispatchers are being on-boarded and are expected to begin training soon, he said.
Morale has improved, and union leadership supports Wriggelsworth’s recommendation, although there hasn’t been an official membership vote, Richman said.
“The group is supportive,” he said. “In just the short time that the sheriff’s office has been in charge at the center, they’ve made some progress in terms of recruiting and retaining staff.”
Staffing challenges have persisted for years, and the crisis was severe enough that the county commissioners last year considered spending $548,000 on a six-month contract with a Colorado-based company to provide temporary 911 dispatcher services. That notion was driven in part by the fact dispatchers had already worked more than 22,000 hours of overtime in 2025. They opted against that option, and Chief Deputy Darin Southworth officially began overseeing the call center on Sept. 1.
Since then, sheriff’s officials have done “a deep dive” into what’s best going forward and concluded the center should be part of the sheriff’s department, Wriggelsworth said.
The call center has about 70 employees and a budget of more than $14 million, he said.
Todd said the change would happen “immediately” if the board approves it, but the reorganization at the sheriff’s office will take longer. It’s unclear what that reorganization might cost, he said.
“They’ll have to go through that whole process of working with HR and our budget office on identifying any positions that need to be reclassified or any new positions that need to come in,” Todd said.
The 911 center is funded with a dedicated millage and a cell phone surcharge, and that’s not expected to change if it becomes part of the sheriff’s department, officials said. County residents pay approximately 0.8 mills for 911 service, plus a monthly phone surcharge.
Wriggelsworth said he plans to create a third division to run the call center. Captain Andy Daenzer, the current field services commander, would command a new operations division, he said.
Wriggelsworth noted that Daenzer ran Ingham County Animal Control for a few months in 2018 after the agency fell into crisis and lost its leadership.
Richman said union officials haven’t been given a timeline for the transition but are aware it could be lengthy.
“It’s nothing but beneficial to our membership,” Richman said.
For one thing, folding the center into the sheriff’s office would make dispatchers eligible for arbitration during collective bargaining − an option they don’t currently have, Richman said.
“They want to do this sooner rather than later, but they also recognize that it’s a big, big, big lift,” Richman said.
Of the nine temporary dispatchers working part-time at the center now, all but one retired from Ingham’s center, meaning nearly all of them were familiar and comfortable with the center’s radio system and technology, Richman said.
While the number of hours dispatchers work hasn’t fallen significantly, “that is as much a function of the fact that it’s not a problem that can be solved overnight,” he said.
The current dispatch center, a consolidation of the Lansing and East Lansing call centers, opened in 2012 in a building on Jolly Road, east of Cedar Street, according to State Journal archives. It was projected to cost $3.1 million, but delays pushed the final cost to $5.6 million.
Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on X @KBPalm_lsj
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Ingham County officials planning to make 911 center part of sheriff’s office
Reporting by Ken Palmer and Rachel Greco, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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