Prior to WCCCA, Washington County public safety dispatching had existed since October of 1973 when the first civilian dispatchers were hired. Having civilian dispatchers, freed police officers and fire fighters to respond to calls rather than stay behind to answer phones and monitor radios. From 1973 to 1985, the Center served as the communications center for the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the cities of Cornelius, Banks, Hillsboro, and Gaston as well as Washington County Fire District 2, the City of Hillsboro Fire Dept., Cornelius Rural Fire Dept., and Banks Fire Department.

In the years following the switch to civilian dispatchers, a demand started to grow for all Oregon residents to have access to 9-1-1. In order to better facilitate this trend, there was a move toward the establishment of central answering points for 9-1-1 calls. As this was occurring, more and more police and fire departments were doing away with their individual dispatch facilities and merging with the Central Dispatch Center. Thus in 1985 WCCCA was "born" and became a consolidated dispatch center. In 1973 our staff consisted of 8 full time dispatchers; WCCCA now has a staff of over 65 full time dispatchers.

In 1990 the citizens of Washington County passed a serial levy which allowed a major upgrade in the County's 9-1-1 system. Due to the support of our citizens for the levy, WCCCA was able to acquire a building large enough to house our current operation, become computerized by installing a computer aided dispatch (CAD) system, upgrade the county wide radio system and become an enhanced 9-1-1 center. An enhanced 9-1-1 Center is one that can display the caller’s phone number automatically (ANI=Automatic Number Information) and the location of the calling number (ALI-Automatic Location Information).

In May of 2016 the citizens of Washington County passed a $77 million General Obligation Bond to upgrade the County’s emergency communication radio system and our facility. More information on the bond can be located here: http://wcemergencycommunications.blogspot.com/

In August of 2016 WCCCA started accepting text messages sent to “911”. This service is designed to assist citizens that are unable to hear or speak during an emergency, such as persons that are hard of hearing, have speech impediments or are otherwise unable to make a voice call due to safety or connectivity reasons. Our slogan is, “Call if you Can, Text if you Can’t”. For additional information on text-to-911 in our region, please go to our regional website on the topic: http://nwtext911.info