The county is expanding its server room and replacing the HVAC system in the Emergency Operations Center at 4408 Cathedral Oaks Road.
Santa Barbara County is building a regional dispatch center at its Emergency Operations Center at 4408 Cathedral Oaks Road. The center serves as a multiagency command headquarters for large local incidents, including wildfires. Credit: Giana Magnoli / Noozhawk file photo

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors approved a construction contract Tuesday for the Emergency Operations and Regional Fire Communications Center project, which will consolidate fire and emergency medical services dispatch into one center.

Currently, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, the Santa Barbara County Fire Department and American Medical Response have 9-1-1 dispatchers in one room at the county’s Public Safety Dispatch Center located at the Sheriff’s Department headquarters at 4434 Calle Real. Other city police departments, fire agencies and the California Highway Patrol have separate dispatch centers.

With the new communications center, fire agencies within the county and emergency medical services dispatchers will be consolidated in one center, separate from the Sheriff’s Department’s dispatch center.

It will provide a “borderless” response, allowing the closest resources to respond to emergencies, regardless of jurisdictional boundaries.

The construction contract was awarded to Santa Maria-based company Edwards Construction Group in the base amount of $13,871,556.

According to the item’s staff report, the contract is being paid for by Santa Barbara County Fire Department funding and by Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management funding from the General Fund.

The new communications center will be attached to the county’s existing Emergency Operations Center building, at 4408 Cathedral Oaks Road, and the EOC’s parking lot — where the communications center is set to be built — will be relocated west of the facility.

“The project will provide SBCFD with a new modernized dispatch center and will upgrade the current Joint Information Center and Call Center for the EOC,” the staff report said. “The project will tie the new [Joint Information Center] and [Call Center] facilities to the existing Incident Management Room via technological means to enable data and information sharing between the facilities.”

The Board of Supervisors chose the Emergency Operations Center as the site for the communications center in 2019 and approved agreements for the Regional Fire Communications Center in 2021.

The total cost of the project is estimated to be about $17,624,666 and, with construction able to commence now that the contract has been approved, completion of the project is set for spring 2024.

— Noozhawk staff writer Serena Guentz can be reached at sguentz@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.