Well, in Bergen County, an effort is under way to regionalize the 911 dispatch services and make it free for the neighboring towns that decide to opt in.

It's been a long term goal of the county executive there who says he sees that as a way to save taxpayers money and streamline emergency services.

Senior correspond Joanna Gagis takes a look.

At the technology, the equipment, the backup, the redundancy.

It's unbelievable.

We were really impressed with it.

East Newark Business Administrator Fred Confessore is explaining Bergen County's call center, which is now handling 911 dispatch for his Hudson County municipality.

Harrison, our neighboring town, was doing dispatch for the borough this storm for several years, and they chose to move on to Bergen because of a cost effective move because it was costing them over $1,000,000 to run dispatch with the personnel, 24, seven, seven people benefits and all that.

Harrison and East Newark are the first municipalities outside of Bergen County to begin utilizing the Bergen 911 dispatch service.

But dozens of towns within the county have also made the move to regionalize their dispatch services.

There were many peace gaps around Bergen County for a while, and then as time went on, there were less and less at a piece of public safety answering point.

And there'll be a couple towns that would answer for other agencies.

They would be a call taker.

They would answer the incoming number one, and they would forward that to the agency that's actually dispatching for them.

So we took that over for 39 agencies.

We do that for now.

So someone standing in these Newark calls 911 the system routes that call to Bergen County and then they contact you or dispatch your police or fire.

Yes.

Confessore explains that East Newark considered partnering with Hudson County, but they would have had to pay 300 to $350000 plus upgrade costs.

The cost factor with Bergen was about $158,000 a year to go and move to their facility.

And that saved us a little bit more money because some of the software costs and annual licenses were being covered by Bergen.

So we didn't have to take that out of pocket.

So it was a pretty big advantage for us to to move to Bergen.

The state is requiring all emergency response systems to upgrade to a program called Next Generation nine one, one or Next gen.

But that comes at a hefty price tag.

That's where Bergen County has stepped in to eliminate that cost for its municipalities toward example.

If you're in a high rise building where you would just get geolocated at the location now that can actually do a cut in the level of what floor you'd be on.

So it's just a little bit more of a pinpoint like, you know, we could pinpoint if you were in a giant stadium and you called where exactly you would be.

And the equipment is so expensive that every little agency to upgrade their desk is it's upwards of a quarter of a million for one position.

So it makes sense to come here.

There's no cost to the municipality to have to capitalize and go out and borrow money to buy all of this infrastructure that is now here at our facility, which we already have.

And in a county with 70 municipalities.

Bergen County Executive Jim Tedesco has a vision for regional izing their services countywide.

Now that all those calls.

Now that all that information is being funneled here.

We now, on a countywide basis, can make much more intelligent and better decisions to deploy resources, assets and things like that around the county.

They run audit before adding any new towns to ensure they're properly trained and staff to handle the demand.

And with their track record.

He believes more will sign on for more services like their EMS response vehicles that deploy throughout the county.

What we believe will happen is as time evolves, those towns will see the service that we're providing and they'll take advantage of the other services that we provide.

A shared service model that actually seems to be catching on and hopes to save more lives in Mahwah.

I'm Joanna Gagis NJ Spotlight News.