SPANISH FORT, Ala. — The Spanish Fort Police Department will take giant steps toward self-sufficiency in 2011 if preliminary budget allocations for the new fiscal year hold.

The roughest draft of the working budget for 2011 earmarks $150,000 for state-of-the-art dispatching software and another $135,000 for the hiring of four full-time dispatchers and one part-time dispatcher.

The expenses are being incurred to help the 12-year-old department separate amicably from a longstanding partnership with the city of Daphne and begin providing its own on-site services.

“We’ve had a tremendous amount of growth as has Daphne, and it’s gotten to the point where our call volume has increased to where we need to take this step forward,” said Spanish Fort Police Chief David Edgar.

Mayor Joe Bonner said the software selected was developed by police departments and not only archives calls but doubles as a bookkeeping system.

District 2 Councilman Mike McMillan asked during an Aug. 20 budget work session if the software will eventually be used to incorporate the city’s volunteer fire department volume, and Bonner said that is the intention.

“They’ve made all of the constructional adjustments at the police department (to accommodate) the software installation, and now they’re ready for us to get into the dispatching,” Bonner said.

Bonner said the city is “on schedule” to bring the four-and-a-half dispatchers on in mid-October for training, and the Daphne Police Department has agreed to allow use of its facility for hands-on training.

The newly created positions, Bonner said, have already created a substantial amount of interest with the city receiving 39 applications by mid-August.

Edgar said when the initial dispatch partnership with Daphne was forged more than a decade ago, Spanish Fort had only four officers, but that figure has increased more than five times. The seeds for the transition were actually sewn, he said, in 2009 when Spanish Fort paid the salary for one of the dispatchers in the Daphne facility.

Based on the draft version of the city’s 2011 budget, the staff additions and one-time software expense will contribute to a potential 17 percent increase in the police department's annual allocation, bringing it to a projected $2.2 million.