Since 2019 the city of Ceres has provided police dispatching for the city of Newman and will continue to do so for the next three years following a contract renewal authorized by the Ceres City Council on Monday, June 24.

The contract with Newman has added stresses to the city’s already thin number of dispatchers, they complained in late 2023.

The contract comes with slight incremental increases over the next three years as follows:

• $17,161 per month for the 2024-25 fiscal year;

• $18,019/month for the 2025-26 fiscal year;

• $18,920/month for the 2026-27 fiscal year.

City Manager Doug Dunford said the council could have chosen to not renew the contract and give up the $649,200 in revenue it would’ve received over the course of the three years. That would have meant cutting the dispatch center staffing levels to pre-2019 numbers and forced Newman city officials to find dispatchers elsewhere.

In other related action on June 24, the council approved a three-year contract with Motorola Solutions to provide police radio maintenance and repairs.

The city has been using Motorola since October when Delta Wireless, the previous contractor, went out of business.

The city asked for quotes from two other companies but found their bids to be higher than Motorola. Both AirCallCommunications of Turlock and Telepath of Fremont provided bids that were $25,000 more over the three years than Motorola is charging.