Madison police are seeking a $200,000 federal grant to test sending a drone to some outdoor 911 calls in the city’s West District at the same time officers are dispatched. The city’s Finance Committee recommended Tuesday that the Common Council approve the grant if it is awarded. The council is expected to vote on the measure Oct. 20. The department applied for the federal funding this summer, before seeking council approval; a police spokesperson said the grant deadline did not leave time to bring the request to the council first. The proposed pilot would run for two years, with an option to extend it for one year. Three-quarters of the grant would pay to lease and house a drone, with the remaining $50,000 covering officer overtime. The department says the funding decision may not come until early next year. If funded, the drone would be based in a trailer in the West District parking lot and manually dispatched to calls within a three-mile radius. Police say the district was selected in part because of its size and the distance officers may need to travel. Airport flight restrictions, call volumes and the nature of calls in other districts made them less suitable, department representatives said. Assistant Police Chief Matt Tye has described drones as a potential de-escalation tool, saying officers could gather information before arriving and keep their distance when appropriate. Police say the device would be sent to specific calls, not used to patrol neighborhoods or look for trouble. The proposal would expand a drone program that began in 2017 and now includes 11 aircraft. Under city rules, the proposed drone would not have license-plate detection, facial recognition, walking-pattern detection or gunshot-detection features. Department policy bars random surveillance and limits drone use to authorized public-safety purposes, including search and rescue and documenting crime scenes. Surveillance remains a concern, Tye acknowledged, while saying the pilot would use call-by-call dispatch. The department plans to send the drone to as many eligible calls as possible to gather data on the technology’s usefulness and report results to city leaders. A study of a similar program in Montgomery County, Maryland, examined 652 drone flights over five months. Initial findings showed drones arrived an average of 4.6 minutes after a call, compared with 12.3 minutes for responding officers, and that nearly one-fifth of flights indicated an in-person response was not needed. The study’s final report is still being prepared, and Madison police say testing the approach locally is the point of the proposed pilot. The department has previously estimated that a permanent, citywide drone-first-response system would cost more than $6 million for three drones. The grant-funded test could help determine whether Madison should consider a longer-term program.