Higher Service Fees Proposed to Help Denver's Lagging 911 Response Times

Denver’s 911 system answers calls within nationally accepted response times at just a 73 percent rate, according to a December 2024 audit by the Denver Auditor’s Office.

The Denver Department of Public Safety estimates it needs to hire 41 additional full-time employees, but the city's 911 budget was already at risk of falling short by the end of the summer without additional funds.

To fix that problem, the DOS is asking Denver City Council to approve an increase to 911 rates charged to every phone line, including cell phones, billed to Denver addresses by about 90 cents per month. Last time the fee was changed was 2019.

According to the National Emergency Number Association and the National Fire Protection Association, 90 percent of calls to 911 centers should be answered within ten seconds and 95 percent should be answered within fifteen seconds. But the recent audit shows just 71 percent of calls were answered within fifteen seconds in Denver, and 73 percent were answered within twenty seconds. During a city council committee meeting on March 5, the DOS shared that those numbers are closer to 80 percent now.

Denver 911 is the only emergency communications center for the City and County of Denver with the exception of the Denver International Airport, which has its own call center. Andrew Dameron, the city's director of emergency communications, told councilmembers that Denver 911 manages over two million calls per year.

Along with the police and fire departments, Denver 911 manages calls for Denver Health paramedics, Denver’s Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) Program and the Crime Stoppers hotline. Denver 911 also helps the Denver Sheriff’s Department, city park rangers and Denver Animal Protection, and is a partner with the National Crime Information Center team, which manages warrant data in the city and county.

Most councilors agreed that increasing the fee was necessary to maintain and improve 911 response time and quality.

“These services are incredibly important, because it's not just about calling for a police officer to respond, it's also calling for our fire department to respond,” Councilwoman Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez said during the meeting. “There are a variety of reasons that people reach out to 911, and I'm grateful for the fact that in Denver that we have these different options.”

The DOS tracks call answering times, but the department doesn’t track total response time, which measures how long from the time a 911 operator answers until help arrives on the scene. The audit suggested the DOS should begin tracking that data, but the DOS declined.

Some agencies covered by Denver 911 do track those times, however, with the audit finding Denver Fire responds to 90 percent of calls within ten minutes and seven seconds, which is four minutes longer than the department’s goal of six minutes and thirty seconds. Denver Health’s goal is to respond within ten minutes and thirty seconds, but the reality is around fourteen minutes and six seconds 90 percent of the time.

According to the Denver Police Department Performance and Transparency Dashboard, the average DPD response time over the last month was fifteen minutes and nineteen seconds.

Dameron said a combination of hiring the proposed 41 new staffers and investing in upgraded technology would help reach national standards for answering calls while improving overall 911 response time.

Denver 911 is currently undergoing a phone system replacement to allow artificial intelligence tools to automatically translate calls to text and other languages to improve accessibility. The agency is also selecting a replacement for its computer-aided dispatch platform, which hasn’t been updated in 23 years. Currently, the airport uses a different platform, so the new system will align both entities for better communication during crises.

Denver currently has the sixth-lowest fee for 911 services of any county in Colorado despite being the second largest by population. To fund needed improvements, Denver 911 hopes city council will approve raising the monthly 911 fee from $1.20 per phone line to $2.12.

“This change will allow us to maintain operations through the rest of 2025 and set us up for success in some of the infrastructure and staffing moves that we've been making over the last few years,” Dameron said.

Denver 911 is mainly funded through the 911 Trust Fund, which is funded exclusively by phone line fees. The Trust Fund can only pay for technology, networks, facilities, training and infrastructure for the 911 system. Only once those expenses have been covered can the fund be used for personnel expenses, according to the city. Any additional funding must be pulled from the city’s general fund.

In 2024 as the city was facing a budget crisis, the DOS began paying for Denver 911’s personnel costs from the Trust Fund instead of the general fund. Before that move, the Trust Fund accounted for a little over half of Denver 911’s budget. Suddenly, the Trust Fund was paying for 84 percent of that budget.

Because of the funding transition, the trust is projected to dip below $0 sometime between August or September if fees remain where they are now. By raising the fee to $2.12 — the maximum allowed by the Colorado Public Utilities Commission — Dameron said the budget shortfall could be avoided.

Compounding the issue is a steady decline in VoIP lines, which use the internet to make calls, and landlines in Colorado since 2021. Until last year, mobile phone line increases were making up the difference, according to information shared during the hearing.

Revenue into the trust dropped from over $12 million in 2023 to under $11.6 million in 2024 after rising by at least $200,000 each previous year dating back to 2019 when the fee was last updated.

A few councilmembers expressed worries about raising fees and the impact on low-income families. Others were interested in charging large corporations a higher fee than individual people or families. Still, the committee agreed that raising the fee is necessary, and passed the proposed ordinance to the full council without objections.

The full council will hear the proposal in the coming weeks, but there is an April 1 deadline so that the new funds can be deposited before the projected budget shortfall later this year.