Mayor seeks emergency dispatch department
By DAN MORIARTY
Staff Writer
WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik is seeking City Council approval of a new ordinance that would create a new Public Safety Communications Department and a new manager for that department.
The City Council Thursday sent the proposed ordinance to its Legislative & Ordinance Committee and to the Personnel Action Committee to review the administrator job description.
Ward 2 City Councilor James E. Brown Jr., chairman of the L&O, has slated a Feb. 27 session of that committee, with the intent to bring the ordinance to the full council at its March 1 session.
Police Chief John A. Camerota, who requested Knapik to submit the proposed ordinance, said this morning that the city is under a state mandate to have a medical emergency dispatch center on line by July 1, 2012.
“The dispatchers have to be trained to give medical assistance over the phone,” Camerota said.
Traditionally, medical emergency calls from the emergency dispatch center located in the Police Station have been transferred to the Fire Department dispatch center at the Broad Street fire headquarters, where personnel provided medical instructions while an ambulance with paramedics was en route.
The new Public Safety Communications Center will be located at the city’s Technology Department at Barnes Regional Airport. The Westfield Emergency Management Agency is currently co-located at the technology center.
The Police Department now has six dispatchers who cover two shifts (16 hours) a day and will add three more dispatchers to extend that coverage to 24-7.
“If the City Council approves the ordinance, we’ll start by hiring the three additional dispatchers,” Camerota said. “We may have to train those new dispatchers. We recently advertised to fill a vacancy and got 47 responses, but only one person had experience.”
The city is already in the process of installing the communication equipment that will be needed to activate the emergency medical dispatch service.
“We’ve moved a fair amount of technology,” Knapik said this morning. “There are still some upgrades that have to be done.:
Knapik said one reason for establishing a combined dispatcher center is that the cost of maintaining two dispatch centers in the city is prohibitive.
“The Fire Department (911) equipment is all outdated,” Knapik said. “We can’t continue the way we have, with two dispatch centers, because the Fire Department technology is so old, we can’t continue to operate it.”
The cost of upgrading the 911 dispatch equipment is about $500,000. The state pays for the system at the dispatch center, but the city would have to fund the second dispatch center.
Camerota said that the increasing cost of continually upgrading emergency dispatch systems is pushing the state, which funds the program through a surcharge on telephone bills, to consider consolidation of those dispatch centers.
“The state has not mandated regional dispatch centers yet, but it’s out there because of the cost of the technology,” Camerota said. “As those 911 systems become more expensive, the fewer points you have, the more money that you save.”
The state of Massachusetts has 240 dispatch answering points, with one in most communities and two in some communities, such as Westfield, where centers have been operated by both the Police and Fire departments.
The state of Texas has eight answering points, while the state of California has a total of 24, Camerota said.
“The 911 systems cost over $500,000, so the state only wants to put them in at a few locations,” he said. “We’re getting ready for the changes we see coming down the pike. If regionalization is mandated, we’d be ready.”
Dan Moriarty can be reached at [email protected]
