Rebuilding Dispatch Services Agreement

DRIGGS — Teton County Fire & Rescue Chief Mike Maltaverne asked county commissioners Wednesday to "amicably terminate" the 2024 dispatch services agreement between his district and the county and replace it with a multi-stakeholder advisory committee. Commissioners agreed at the table. The new committee will first draft a replacement agreement before the BOCC winds down the 2024 contract.

The 2024 agreement was the first written dispatch contract between TCFR and the county of which Maltaverne is aware. Before it, the sheriff's department ran 911 dispatch, and the fire district paid the county for the service on a handshake. Maltaverne put the relationship on paper and signed it in August 2024. He told the Teton County Board of Commissioners (BOCC) at its May 27 meeting that the paper "has not really been followed precisely" since.

The Dispatch Center Is Doing Two Jobs With One Team

Maltaverne said he had not understood the scale of one structural drag on the dispatch center until a comparison meeting with Madison County. Dispatchers in Teton County are also performing records functions for the sheriff's office and providing clerical support. Most sheriff's offices, the chief said, keep their own records employees. The Teton County dispatch center absorbs both jobs.

"And I think that leads to some of our challenges with having those dispatchers be able to have consistency and complete dispatching information," Maltaverne told the board.

He paired the finding with a cluster of dispatch-side concerns: no consistent standard operating procedure for fire and EMS dispatching, existing procedures "not always being followed consistently," "inaccurate or inconsistent dispatching," "incomplete dispatch information coming to our responders," and no quality assurance or quality improvement process to close the loop when his department flags a problem.

Maltaverne traced the pattern to the turnover that the dispatch center has not absorbed. In his tenure as chief, he counted six Teton County commissioners, three administrators, three dispatch managers, and "dozens of dispatchers" who came and went in four years.

He flagged the next figure as hearsay: dispatch had been down to a single full-time dispatcher, backfilled by part-timers brought in from Madison, Fremont, Bonneville, and Jefferson counties. Maltaverne mapped the analogy to his own department. If TCFR lost a comparable share of full-time firefighters and replaced them with out-of-county part-timers, he said, he would have significant concerns about capacity and would report that up the chain to commissioners rather than let it travel as a rumor.

County Administrator Billie Siddoway walked commissioners through current staffing. The sheriff's office has six dispatch staff total: one manager, one dispatcher newly released from training, and four in training, two on days and two on nights. One budgeted position is still open. Part-time backfills from the four neighboring counties continue while the 12-week training pipeline runs each new hire through observation, traffic-stop ride-alongs, and supervised 911 calls.

Maltaverne framed the failure point as structural, not anyone's individual performance. Commissioner Dan Powers accepted that framing: "We not only have the same challenges, but we also have the same goals. The same constituents."

The Chief's Proposal and What the BOCC Added

Maltaverne's proposed structure had two parts. First, the existing contract winds down on a 60-day notice. The agreement allows termination through three different mechanisms, and the contract has been auto-renewed annually since signing. Second, a new advisory committee assumes responsibility for the relationship.

The composition Maltaverne proposed, and the BOCC sharpened at the table:

One fire commissioner, one county commissioner, the county administrator
The sheriff and the fire chief
TCFR's point of contact for ambulance work at Teton Valley Health Care
One of the valley's three mayors, on rotation
TCFR's medical director, the licensed physician overseeing TCFR's medical operations
Greg Adams, the county's emergency manager, who is also covering the sheriff's office IT. Powers added Adams mid-discussion; Siddoway affirmed the IT-coverage rationale.
Possible invitee: Teton County, Wyoming, fire chief Mike Moyer

The committee would meet monthly. The dispatch manager reports out at each one. Scope spans budget development and adoption, capital planning, quality assurance, quality improvement, and long-range strategy. Maltaverne offered the dispatch consoles as an example of the capital piece. Replacement runs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the county confirmed at the table that it isn't budgeted.

The committee's first job will be drafting a new dispatch services agreement with a defensible rationale for what the fire district pays.

"I don't think we should be paying zero, but I want some rationale," Maltaverne said.

Powers proposed reversing the sequence; the chief agreed. "Doing the advisory committee first before we abandon the service agreement makes total sense," Maltaverne said.

One quality-assurance mechanism the chief named for the new agreement: Priority Dispatch, the medical/fire/law enforcement protocol system Maltaverne has worked under for 30 years. Priority Dispatch supplies third-party quality assurance for a year after dispatcher training, generates per-dispatcher monthly performance reports, and triggers remedial training when call-determinant accuracy drops below a threshold. Adopting it would bump the local fire-protection insurance rating by a point. Siddoway has taken the program's classes; she and the chief agreed that Priority Dispatch and medically-assisted dispatch belong on the new committee's first meeting agenda.

What Dispatch Is Supporting

Commissioner Ron James asked the chief what a fully resourced TCFR would look like. The numbers Maltaverne walked through show why dispatch quality is load-bearing for this department.

Six to eight firefighters on duty 24 hours a day is the operating floor. About 25 percent of TCFR's roughly 1,200 incidents a year involve overlap with another incident already in progress. TCFR has three stations: Victor, Driggs, and Tetonia. The Tetonia station is not staffed. Maltaverne is in early discussions with the City of Tetonia regarding impact fees and facility modifications that would allow him to staff it. Staffing the Tetonia station would take at least six additional firefighters, two per shift to start, and up to nine or ten at full coverage; presently, none are budgeted today.

The Insurance Services Office's Public Protection Classification scale runs from 1 to 10, with 10 the highest risk. Incorporated areas within 5 miles of a staffed station are rated a 3. Properties more than five miles from a staffed firehouse score 8, 9, or 10.

Maltaverne pointed to the National Fire Protection Association's standard for extinguishing a single-family dwelling fire: 16 firefighters on scene. His "king for the day" daily staffing, enough on duty to field NFPA's full complement at a single-family fire on any given day, would be 16. His realistic short-term ask: two more full-time employees on shift. The long arc to a fully staffed department, he said, runs 10 to 15 years. The sheriff's office, he noted, has the same staffing problem.

Against that floor, every misrouted dispatch call and every gap between dispatch procedure and field practice cost the department response time; it has no slack to absorb.

Alta Is the Working Example

TCFR already runs the kind of dispatch agreement the chief wants. Teton County, Wyoming, pays TCFR $580,000 a year to provide fire and EMS service to Alta and Grand Targhee Resort. Teton County, Wyoming, renewed the five-year contract on January 1, 2026, after meetings between Maltaverne and his Wyoming counterpart began in late 2025. Calls under the contract grew from 149 to 155 year over year. Most of the resort's buildings have built-in fire protection systems. Without the contract, Maltaverne told the board, TCFR would have to lay off six or seven employees.

Maltaverne credited his working relationship with Teton County, Wyoming, fire chief Mike Moyer for the arrangement's success. They talk often, share notes, and take each other's calls in the middle of the night about events that don't affect the other's district. Maltaverne also files year-end reports with the Wyoming county commissioners.

He offered the Alta contract as a working example for the commissioners — both for the next county dispatch agreement and for their broader negotiations with Teton County, Wyoming, where no equivalent contract covers sheriff or dispatch.

The Targhee Question Sits in the Background

The Alta contract bears on a larger question at the county level. Grand Targhee Resort sits in Teton County, Wyoming, but the expansion the resort has been pushing through Wyoming entitlements would put more load on Teton Valley: on Idaho roads, on Idaho emergency response, and on Idaho infrastructure. Wyoming collects the tax revenue. No mechanism exists yet to compensate Idaho services for that load at the county level.

TCFR has one. The $580,000-a-year arrangement covering Alta and Targhee is the most developed cross-border service relationship Teton County, Idaho has with Teton County, Wyoming. Maltaverne did not present it as a comprehensive solution to the Targhee-load question. He presented it as something that works.

Powers raised the parallel for the sheriff's side at the same meeting. If the only deputy on shift in unincorporated Teton County gets called to hold a scene at Alta or Targhee, the Idaho side runs unstaffed until the deputy returns. Unlike fire, no inter-county sheriff's contract covers those calls. "Maybe then our agreement could be a template for even the sheriff's offices," Maltaverne offered.

What's Next

The 911 Advisory Committee, the name the BOCC settled on at the table, meets for the first time Tuesday, June 2, at 9:30 a.m. at the sheriff's office. It piggybacks on the existing response-agency meeting that already runs at that hour. Voting membership, scope, and the ordering of first tasks will be discussed at that meeting. Powers committed to attending; James said he could be there too.

Federal forecasters expect above-normal fire potential across southern Idaho this July. The Signal covered the outlook in detail in An Active Fire Season Is Coming to Teton Valley.

What to watch: The June 2, 911 Advisory Committee meeting at the sheriff's office, and whether the committee returns to the BOCC with a draft replacement dispatch services agreement before the BOCC terminates the 2024 contract.

Fire Chief and BOCC Will Form Committee to Rebuild Dispatch Services Agreement