On Monday, the calls for service from several Box Elder County entities such as the Brigham City Police Department, Perry Police Department, Tremonton-Garland Police Department, Perry City EMS, Brigham City Fire Department, Garland Fire Department and Tremonton Fire Department will be routed through Weber 911.

In a statement received by the Standard-Examiner earlier this month, officials held a press conference on Jan. 14 to explain the move.

“We know this decision comes at the end of an emotional time for our communities,” read a statement received by the Standard-Examiner on the press conference. “But the events of August 17 did not initiate this change. Brigham City Fire Chief Brandon Thueson and Police Chief Chad Reyes have been asking for changes to be made at Box Elder Communications Center ever since we started working for Brigham City. We value the relationships we have with other agencies in our county. But we need to prioritize public safety over our egos and over our relationships.”

The statement adds a major sticking point for these agencies came last summer.

“The final straw, the event that really pushed Mayor Bott to move forward with the change, was the data breach experienced by Box Elder County in early August,” the statement said. “Box Elder’s dispatch center operated off of pen and paper for about two weeks even though other area dispatch centers offered to take over dispatch responsibilities during that time. The insistence that we regress back 50 years put our first responders at risk.”

Weber Dispatch Executive Director Kevin Rose told the Standard-Examiner on Wednesday that he isn’t expecting a major impact on the center come Monday.

“We ran the numbers when we were looking at this, and we think that it’s going to have about a 5%-7% increase in our total call volume, so not a huge increase,” he said. “We’re not needing to add additional dispatch positions, channels or anything like that. We’re able to absorb it pretty easily. We were approved for four additional employees for that additional call load that’s being covered with revenue that we’re receiving from the cities to provide the services for them.”

For context, he said that the Weber 911 Dispatch Center took 80,853 911 calls and 191,574 nonemergency calls in 2025. The dispatch center currently handles the calls for all first-responder agencies in Weber County and Morgan County as well as some regional state agency traffic.

Rose said they are honored to take on the new responsibilities.

“It was something where we took our time to really dive into it and ensure that was something we could do,” he said. “We had a lot of conversations at our board meetings, with our administrative control board and the agencies to determine whether it was the right thing to do. Ultimately, our board decided they felt that it was.”

He said a lot of work has gone into getting the dispatch center’s 69 dispatchers and supervisors ready for the transition.

“We’ve been training our dispatchers the last several weeks. They’re excited and nervous — it’s something new and different — but at the end of the day, we look at this as this is nothing different than what we do every day for our existing agencies,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a huge problem for us. We’re definitely excited to get things started on Monday and provide the services to them that we’ve been providing to the citizens of Morgan and Weber counties.”