Some of the most heroic work in public safety happens in the smallest rooms, on the longest shifts, with the least backup. And while the rest of the world argues about “innovation,” the one-seaters are over here doing algebra with duct tape, legacy gear, and sheer willpower.
Today we’ll be talking about why small 9-1-1 centers, especially the legendary “1-seaters,” are carrying a modern public safety workload on budgets that often belong in a museum exhibit. We’ll also talk about why 9-1-1 funding has to mean 9-1-1 funding, because words matter when lives do.
During the past decade I’ve written well over 200 blogs. I’ve been on LinkedIn for more than 20 years. And I spend a lot of time reading articles, opinions, and posts by some of the most prominent thought leaders in our industry.
That last part is important, because if you spend enough time reading public safety content online, you start to notice something. The posts that really move the needle are not the ones that say “Happy Friday!” next to a meme of a raccoon holding coffee. The posts that matter are the ones that put a spotlight on the uncomfortable truth, the kind that makes you sit back and say, “Yep. That’s exactly it.”
One of the folks I really enjoy reading is someone I met just a few years ago while serving on the NENA National Board. Currently serving as the vice president of the organization, and stepping into the role as president next year, is Roxanne Van Gundy, ENP.
Roxanne doesn’t have a blog site, although she totally should. But if you follow her on LinkedIn, you know her posts go well beyond the common “Hey, here’s the latest cute cat video.” Although you will get information on her favorite Buddy. If you follow her, you know exactly what I mean. If you don’t, it’s really not relevant to you.
What is relevant is this: in a recent post about the wildfires in the Midwest, Roxanne mentioned, “The centers dealing with this fire in Kansas are 1 seaters. The toughest of the tough.”
That statement couldn’t be more true.
The public doesn’t realize most centers are small
If you’re not in public safety, you might picture a 9-1-1 center like it’s a NASA control room. Giant video walls. Twenty people wearing headsets. Somebody dramatically pointing at a map while a dispatcher yells, “Send everything!”
Sure, those centers exist. Big cities, big agencies, big staffing models. But the lion’s share of 9-1-1 centers out there are actually small, if not tiny, in staff and size. And those centers still have the same expectation placed on them by the public: Answer immediately. Get it right. Do it every time. Do it under stress. Do it with no mistakes. Do it forever.
The public expectation does not scale down just because your center is small.
A house fire does not become a “small fire” because your center has one position. A cardiac arrest does not wait for you to finish your radio traffic. A multi-vehicle crash does not check your schedule to see if you are on a double.
This hit home for me because I lived it
This really hit home with me because I started in a single-seat center, serving three municipalities with three police departments, three fire departments, and three EMS services. I did it by myself, working 12-hour shifts.
If you’ve never worked that environment, here’s the best analogy I can give you.
Imagine you’re the only employee in a store. You’re the cashier, the security guard, the manager, and the person unloading the truck. The phone is ringing. Someone is at the register. Somebody just spilled something in aisle five. And there’s a line out the door.
Now imagine that instead of selling potato chips, you’re handling life-or-death emergencies, tracking responder safety, coordinating mutual aid, running radio traffic, updating call notes, and trying to stay calm while someone is screaming, crying, whispering, or not speaking at all.
That’s a one-seater.
And they are absolutely the toughest of the tough.
“Back in the day” had less tech, but also fewer tech bills
Back in “the day,” no one really had much technology in the center. You had phones, radios, maybe a basic CAD if you were lucky, and a wall clock that never seemed to move fast enough during the last hour of shift.
Today, every center has technology. And technology is expensive.
Here’s the part that people outside the room often miss: having a small center does not reduce the technology needs and does not reduce the cost of delivering that service to constituents.
In some cases, being small makes it worse.
Because modern systems are not priced like old rotary phones. They’re priced like enterprise infrastructure. Licensing, maintenance, cybersecurity, redundancy, logging, storage, compliance, upgrades, integration, training, and support contracts that read like they were written by a committee of attorneys who never had to answer a 9-1-1 call.
A one-seat center still needs:
- Reliable call handling
- Radio systems and redundancy
- CAD and RMS connectivity (or at least CAD)
- Mapping and location services that work
- Logging recorder compliance
- Cybersecurity controls
- Resilience, backup power, and continuity planning
- And now, NG911 capability planning, because the future is not waiting
You can’t tell the public, “We’re a small center, so we only do the budget version of emergencies.” That’s not a thing.
New Jersey: a masterclass in why consolidation is hard and still necessary
In states like New Jersey, with close to 300 9-1-1 centers across its 26 counties, the state needs to learn its lesson in the value of consolidation.
I’m going to say that carefully, because I know consolidation can make people bristle. It’s emotional. It’s political. It can feel personal.
But from an infrastructure standpoint, running hundreds of separate operational islands means:
- duplicated technology stacks
- duplicated contracts
- duplicated support costs
- duplicated cybersecurity exposure
- and wildly uneven service capabilities depending on where you happen to be standing when you dial 9-1-1
Consolidation is not about disrespecting local identity. It’s about building an emergency communications system that is sustainable, secure, and capable of evolving.
And yes, consolidation costs money. Up front. Real money.
But here’s the punchline: so does staying fragmented. You just pay for it forever.
The funding problem: when the 9-1-1 fee stops acting like a 9-1-1 fee
Now we get to the part where I’m going to be just a little snarky, because I’ve earned it.
When a 9-1-1 fee is collected on telephone lines, the public assumes that money funds 9-1-1. Not “sort of.” Not “sometimes.” Not “after we cover other line items.” They assume it supports the network, the centers, the staffing, and the modernization that everyone keeps talking about.
But when that same fee is subject to diversion, it becomes a trust problem, not just a budget problem.
Using the number that has been widely cited in industry discussions from FCC fee reporting, New Jersey’s diversion rate has been described at levels as high as 81.5% in some reporting periods. Let that sink in.
If you collected a dollar and spent eighteen cents on what you told everyone it was for, you wouldn’t call that “budget flexibility.” You’d call that “why are you surprised people are mad?”
And before anyone jumps in with “But it was used for public safety,” let me address that head-on.
Public safety matters. All of it. Police, fire, EMS, emergency management, preparedness, support services, and the thousand other things that keep communities safe.
But 9-1-1 is the network and the system that receives the call for help. It is the on-ramp to everything else.
If the fund is going to be used for broad public safety initiatives, then call it what it is: a public safety fund.
Do not call it a 9-1-1 fund and then act shocked when 9-1-1 stakeholders show up with receipts and a calculator.
Why the name matters more than people think
It might sound like a minor nit. It isn’t.
When you’re working with decades-old equipment, aging trunks, fragile interconnects, unsupported hardware, and a network that behaves like a glass chandelier blowing in the wind, words matter.
Because the funding decisions behind those words determine whether the next outage is an inconvenience or a catastrophe.
And here’s the worst part: when people pay a 9-1-1 fee each and every month, then hear from the 9-1-1 industry that we are in desperate need of funds to rebuild the next generation of 9-1-1 networks, it does not bode well with constituents.
The public response becomes:
- “Wait, I thought I already pay for that.”
- “Where did it go?”
- “Why do you need more?”
And honestly? That is a fair question.
You can’t run a long-term modernization program on short-term trust. Eventually the math catches up, and so does the skepticism.
If you’re new to the field, here’s the simple version
For the 20- and 30-somethings coming into public safety right now, here’s the simple, relatable explanation. Think of 9-1-1 funding like a dedicated streaming subscription.
If you pay for a subscription that says “Movies,” and then 80% of your payment goes to “Office Snacks,” you’re going to have questions when the movie won’t load.
And when the provider says, “We need you to pay more so we can upgrade the platform,” your response is going to be: “How about we start by spending what I already pay on the thing you said you’d provide?”
That is exactly where many communities are landing.
And here’s what the “1-seaters” teach the rest of us
Roxanne’s line about the one-seaters wasn’t just praise. It was a reminder.
The smallest centers are often the ones holding the line with the least margin for error. They do not have extra staff to absorb policy changes. They do not have teams dedicated to cybersecurity. They do not have a grant writer down the hall. They do not have a spare console sitting in a box.
They have professionals who show up, sit down, and do the job anyway.
So if we’re serious about NG911, resilience, cybersecurity, and modernization, then we have to be serious about:
- stable funding that actually funds 9-1-1
- governance that aligns dollars with outcomes
- consolidation planning that is honest and respectful
- and policies that recognize that small centers are not “small problems”
The Bottom Line
Most 9-1-1 centers are small, and some are truly one-seat operations that carry an enormous responsibility with limited resources. Technology costs have risen, threats have multiplied, and expectations have not dropped one inch. Consolidation can be part of the solution, but it requires investment, planning, and trust.
And trust is hard to maintain when 9-1-1 fees are diverted to purposes that are not directly tied to building, operating, and modernizing 9-1-1 itself.
If we want the public to support the next generation of 9-1-1 networks, we have to start by treating 9-1-1 funding like it actually belongs to 9-1-1.
Because the toughest of the tough deserve more than applause. They deserve infrastructure that holds up when everything else is on fire.
That wraps up my latest Blog. If you like what you read today, please drop a LIKE, and be sure to tell your friends.
And don’t forget to leave a comment and let me know. If you have any questions or want to suggest a topic of your own, reach out to me at Fletch911.