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The Urbandale City Council has voted to help lift the lid on the “sardine can” that has served the last eight years as a multi-city emergency dispatch center.

Westcom Dispatch Facility is a joint venture of Clive, Urbandale and West Des Moines. Plans are under way, following the Urbandale council’s vote, to build a 3,000-square-foot facility at West Des Moines Fire Station 19, 8055 Mills Civic Parkway, and move personnel out of the center’s present location at the city’s law center.

“They are literally stacked on top of each other,” Urbandale City Manager Bob Layton said. Dennis Henderson, Clive city administrator, said workers were stuffed in the old facility like “sardines in a sardine can.”

“We just have to get them into more space because we can’t get much more operational capacity with what we have,” Henderson said.

Total cost of the project is $663,000, which will be allocated among the three communities based on the number of police, fire and emergency requests they each generate.

The Urbandale council approved the city’s $196,000 allocation as part of its $161 million 2008-2013 capital improvement projects budget.

A little more than half of the budget will be paid for through general obligation bonds. About 73 percent of the budget is earmarked for street improvement projects, with about $12 million of those costs paid for through special tax assessments on residents living along the streets targeted for repaving, reconstruction or widening.