When you call 911, you are having the worst moment of your day. You are not thinking about which building answers the phone, or about county lines and city lines. You are thinking about one thing. Get me help, and get it now. That is the only standard that matters, and it is the standard I am holding this whole effort to.

Where Things Stand

On May 18, the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners adopted Resolution 2026-5-18, which puts the County position in plain writing. The next day, I sent it by letter to Mayor Mitch Colvin and to every member of the City Council. The position is simple. One countywide 911 center that serves everyone, the City of Fayetteville, our eight smaller towns, and the unincorporated county alike. 

The County as the Lead Administrative Agency, with the 911 professionals as County employees. Shared governance with the City, where the County Manager and the City Manager steer it together. Mental health crisis response built in as a core part of the system. And baseline 911 service at no direct cost to every town in the county.

And this is not a new ask. At a joint meeting with the City back in November 2025, the Board voted for this same path. So the letter is not a first step. It is a renewed invitation to finish what we started together. The goal is not to win a vote. The goal is an agreement, one that saves tax dollars and protects the health, safety, and welfare of the people we both serve.

One County, Two 911 Centers

Cumberland County is one of the last counties in North Carolina still running two separate 911 centers. The County runs one. The City of Fayetteville runs the other. Two budgets. Two sets of technology. Two chains of command. One county. The State 911 Board and the North Carolina Department of Information Technology have pushed consolidation for years, through policy and through grants. We are behind, and being behind costs us time and money.

And this is not for lack of study. A full programming and planning study for a consolidated center was completed back in 2016, and you can read that study here. Across several attempts since 2007, this county has looked hard at consolidation for a decade. The studying has been done. What is left is the doing.

We Agree on Almost Everything

Here is the part that surprises people. The County and the City are not far apart.

In 2025, the Mayor and I jointly stood up a Public Safety Working Group. Not politicians in a room. The people who answer and respond to your calls. Municipal Fire Chiefs and Police Chiefs. The Sheriff. Our volunteer fire departments. Both 911 center managers. Cape Fear Valley EMS. They studied it and voted unanimously for full consolidation, under joint governance, with mental health crisis response built in from day one, and they recommended the existing County center as the home. You can read their full report here.

The public is with us, and the numbers come from a survey of both residents and public safety professionals that anyone can read. Among the public safety professionals, roughly 80 percent preferred either joint or County governance over a City run model. Among residents, nearly three out of four said they would support a joint center that delivers better technology and faster response times. Both groups said the same thing in their own words. They are tired of how long this has dragged on, and they want it settled. You can read the full survey results here.

So we agree on one center. We agree on joint governance. We agree on protecting jobs. We agree on building in mental health. One real question is left. Who runs it.

My Position. The County Should Be the Lead Administrative Agency.

Words matter here, so let me be clear. Lead Administrative Agency does not mean the County runs your emergency. It means the County is the administrative home. 

Budget. Human resources. Technology. The building. Reporting and accreditation. The emergency decisions stay exactly where they belong, with the Sheriff, the Fire Chiefs, the Police Chief, the Emergency Services Director, and the Medical Director. And this is not just my promise. The resolution writes it down, and it puts those same public safety leaders on a formal Public Safety Communications Council that guides how the system operates.

So why the County for the administrative home? Three plain reasons.

We already run this at a county wide scale. Our modern, accredited center already dispatches for the unincorporated county and all eight towns, runs the dispatch system both sides use, with a new digital system live as of June 15, and is the backup when the City system goes down, all from the building that houses our Emergency Operations Center. 

Consolidation does not start something new. It finishes something we are already doing.

The County is the entity responsible for mental health across the county. A County run center lets us put behavioral health clinicians in the room and mobile Crisis Intervention Teams in the field, partially funded through our Alliance Health partnership and connected to Cape Fear Valley Health Systems. 

The County Health Department and the County Department of Social Services work alongside our teams every day, on substance use, public health, child welfare, adult protective services, and family crisis. These are county functions, not city functions. The call center has to live where the rest of that system already lives.

The partnerships are already in place. The County works directly with Fort Bragg, and we are bringing the installation into our 911 coordination now and into the consolidated center going forward. When a disaster hits, the response has to move seamlessly across the county and the installation alike, and on the County side that coordination already works. These are relationships we would build on, not build.

The Facts Behind It

You will hear that Fayetteville answers more calls, so Fayetteville should lead. The City does answer more incoming calls. But dispatching a response, not answering the phone, is the work that runs the system, and there the two centers are nearly even. In the 2025 calendar year, the County dispatched 203,660 calls and the City dispatched 212,925, a gap of less than 5 percent. Those figures come from County Emergency Services, drawn from the state 911 routing system and our own local dispatch system.

And that near even number still understates the County load. The County dispatches for all county and municipal fire departments, and for every law enforcement agency outside the City of Fayetteville. The City processes its own medical calls, but the County carries emergency medical dispatch and resource management across the whole county, plus Animal Services dispatch. Capacity is not a question either. Over the past three years, the County center absorbed seven City call rollover events without missing a beat. The City absorbed two from us.

On standards, the County center is already an accredited Center of Excellence in Emergency Fire Dispatch, earned again in October 2025. Our proposal commits to full Triple Accreditation within four years, with hard targets. Answer the call in 10 seconds, 90 percent of the time. Process the emergency in 65 seconds, 90 percent of the time, for fire, rescue, and emergency medical services.

Why the County

Here is a fair question. The big metros let their city run the consolidated center, so why not here. In Raleigh and Greensboro, the city operates the center because the city is the hub of the county. In Cumberland it is the other way around. Fayetteville is our largest city, but it is not the hub of this county. The County already serves the whole county, and it is the backup when the City system goes down.

On governance, that same working group made a deliberate choice. It did not try to decide who administers the center. Its chair had watched the fight over control wreck past consolidation attempts, so the group left that call to the elected boards. That is the question in front of us now. The City says it should administer the center, and that is a fair view to put forward. But this has never been about one government taking over the other. That same group even recommended that the current City 911 manager lead the consolidated center. The goal is to put the best of both under one roof.

There is also the matter of who pays. One 911 center instead of two saves taxpayers money. And here is the part people miss. The money the State sends for 911 does not cover the full cost of running a center. The rest comes out of local General Fund dollars, the same dollars that pay for core services like emergency medical services and public health. A 911 center is exactly that kind of core service, and it serves every person in the county. So the local share should come from the government whose tax base is the whole county, which is the County. That spreads the cost fairly, keeps city residents from paying twice, once to the City and once to the County, and saves the City, which no longer has to fund a center of its own.

And the answer holds up for everyone it touches. Nobody loses a job, since the County proposal protects existing positions, brings everyone to salary parity, and preserves the accreditations the dispatchers have earned. It saves money, with the City standing to save an estimated $3 million a year (based on public budget numbers) compared to running its own center. And the small towns are protected, because Eastover, Falcon, Godwin, Hope Mills, Linden, Spring Lake, Stedman, and Wade all receive complete baseline 911 service at no direct cost, as a core County function. That is what fairness looks like for the whole county, not just the largest city in it.

A Word on House Bill 1220

There is a bill in Raleigh called House Bill 1220. One part of it would let this Board decide, by majority vote, to operate one 911 center for the whole county, run by the County and held to the standards of the North Carolina 911 Board.

In recent weeks, that 911 language was added to House Bill 1220. Senator Tom McInnis already had our adopted resolution in hand, at his request, so the County position was in writing. The moment I found out it was moving, I went to work with Senator McInnis, Representative Wheatley, Representative Colvin, and others from our delegation, and I kept my fellow commissioners informed. Mayor Colvin and I then spoke with Senator McInnis together, and he agreed to hold the 911 language, to give the County and the City room to reach an agreement on our own. As a former state senator, I know that sometimes a legislative step helps resolve a local issue in the best interest of citizens. I believe that is what he intended, and I thank him for it.

Here is the part that matters most. That language does not have to run at all. If Mayor Colvin and I can report that the County and the City have reached a final agreement, through a joint letter or a joint resolution, there is no need for it. What matters now is finishing an agreement more than ten years in the making, so that the people who live here get the best emergency services we can provide.

The Goal Is an Agreement

So here we are. The hard work is done. The professionals have studied it and agreed. The community has shown it wants one system. The structure is close. The savings are real. The mental health piece is ready. What is left is an agreement. Not a winner and a loser, but a deal the City can stand behind, the County can stand behind, and our eight towns can count on.

Because at the end of all of it, this comes back to one person. The person who picks up the phone on the worst day of their life and needs one system, one standard, and one fast answer.

One county. One 911 center. One standard. Let us finish this together.