Nassau, Suffolk get 'down payment' from state for long-term fixes to 911 system

Suffolk and Nassau counties each will receive $1.9 million in New York State grants to help replace aging 911 systems with new ones that are more robust and resilient, though the funding, announced last week, is at best a "down payment" for costly upgrades that will take years to complete, according to state officials.

"New York’s 911 is currently old-school analog, still running on copper wire," said Commissioner Jackie Bray of the state’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Service in an interview. "What we’re doing, what Gov. Hochul has invested in over the last two years, will bring the system into the 21st century, preparing for it to be high-functioning and leveraging the latest technology."

The grants are part of an $85 million investment by the state government in upgrades to 911 systems for most of New York's 57 counties.

The new 911 system, sometimes known as Next Generation 911 or NG911, will help first responders pinpoint callers’ locations to a degree that most current systems cannot and will connect emergency call centers across the state to keep any one center from getting overloaded, Bray said.

There are currently 18 call centers in Nassau County and 12 in Suffolk, Bray said, and each county has a primary call center with backup. But authorities learned from high-call volume incidents like Buffalo’s Christmas 2022 blizzard that "some events are so large that regional centers get overloaded," she said. "What’s really needed is capacity to roll all those calls away" to other regions of the state.

NG911 will do that, but full rollout is three to five years off, with a cost of about $200 million, Bray said, adding that the state has already spent $130 million.

The grants announced by the state Thursday are "a significant down payment" but counties bear primary responsibility for their 911 systems and "will have to invest more in coming years," she said.

"There are not federal dollars at this point to help us with the transition," she said.

A federal website, 911.gov, shows that no statewide NG911 plan has been adopted, no one in the state is currently served by a NG911-capable call center and most milestones for NG911 procurement are still in the "legacy" stage, far from full transition.

Representatives for Nassau and Suffolk did not comment Thursday, but in an April white paper, the New York State Association of Counties warned that, statewide, "funding shortfalls often delay these improvements, especially in areas struggling with basic interoperability."

State Sen. Monica Martinez (D-Brentwood) said she has co-sponsored legislation to “ensure more money is available for grants and reimbursements to counties” for emergency call center development and operations, according to the paper.

The paper’s authors recommended ending what they said was the state’s diversion into its general fund of more than $1.3 billion of $3.1 billion collected through mobile service surcharges under a 2008 federal law. Under that law, the New and Emerging Technologies (NET) 9-1-1 Improvement Act, the funds were to be used "exclusively for 9-1-1 services," according to the paper.

The paper’s authors also recommended state legislation mandating annual funding to counties working on the 911 system transition.