The first-year sheriff won support Tuesday from the Salt Lake County Council to break from the Valley Emergency Communications Center (VECC), which dispatches police and fire services to communities countywide except Salt Lake City.

"We believe that returning those 911 calls to the Sheriff's Office," Winder said, "provides a significant public-safety enhancement to the citizens we serve."

The council voted 7-2 to sign a resolution that puts VECC on notice that the county plans to splinter from the center's 911 services June 30, 2008.

What vexes county leaders presently is the one- to two-minute delay in response times - caused by VECC dispatchers transferring emergency calls to the Sheriff's Office or the Unified Fire Authority before crews are deployed - and the lack of a redundant 911 network if the call system goes down.

The Democratic sheriff also suggests the county could capture a larger share of 911 revenues collected within its boundaries, making an independent call center less costly.

"After many, many years of trying to fix this problem, we have to do whatever we have to do at this point," Republican Councilman Mark Crockett said. "It is an emergency issue. It is a medical-response issue. It is a public-safety issue."

The dual detractors from Tuesday's decision were GOP Councilmen Marv Hendrickson and David Wilde, the latter questioning whether the county is ceding too quickly from the dispatch service.

"This makes me think of a marriage in which one party has been thinking the whole time, 'One day we are going to get divorced,' " Wilde said. "I wish that when two parties get together, they would get together with the idea that they are going to fight to work it out."

Council colleagues disagreed. Even Democratic Councilman Randy Horiuchi, who previously advocated sticking with VECC, argued the county cannot put its constituents at risk any longer.

"The residents we represent," Horiuchi said, "deserve the best service as immediately as possible."

The shift to a sheriff-operated 911 center - which could serve as a primary dispatch center for the Unified Fire Authority - could hurt more than help response times, according to VECC Executive Director William Harry.

By fracturing the county's emergency calls, he said, police and fire crews no longer could respond as effectively to incidents that require personnel to cross city and township lines.

Rather, Harry said, it could set back the county's practice of mutual aid 20 years.

"We will end up transferring calls to them and them to us," he said, "because we have adjacent agencies that have to work together."

While the county is one of the largest money makers for VECC, the countywide dispatcher could operate without that revenue, Harry said, probably without a staff reduction.

Conversely, he doubts the Sheriff's Office would operate any more economically, even with more money, because of the inevitable rise in overhead costs.

Salt Lake County now will send its resolution to VECC with the footnote that it will reconsider splitting 911 services if the call center resolves the county's concerns. The move also is contingent on UFA routing all of its calls through the Sheriff's Office.

If the problems persist, the Sheriff's Office will begin taking its own calls by next summer.

Said Democratic Mayor Peter Corroon, "Something has to happen here."

jstettler@sltrib.com