WESTFIELD – A committee organized to consider the possibility of creating a centralized dispatch center to handle calls for all police, fire and medical emergencies in the city has completed its work and has submitted a report for review by the police and fire chiefs before they present the plan to Westfield Mayor Daniel Knapik.
The study of the possible consolidation began in 2009, when then mayor Michael Boulanger appointed a committee to consider the idea, but the study didn’t get very far until Mayor Daniel Knapik took office and asked Police Chief John Camerota and Fire Chief Mary Regan to look into it.
Regan said “We were the first ones in the room to see if it was something we wanted to do” and said that the two chiefs found “it makes a lot of sense to pool our resources.”
A working committee led by police Capt. Hipolito Nunez and Deputy Fire Chief Andy Hart was formed with committee members Peter Cowles, a police dispatcher, Greg Heath, the fire department’s superintendent of alarms, and Kevin Berrien and Steve Zawada, network administrators at the city’s Tech Center located on the grounds of Barnes Municipal Airport.
Much of the impetus to make the change stems from a new mandate imposed by the state government which requires improved dispatching for medical emergencies by July of 2012, Nunez said.
Knapik said that the new mandate nudges the city in a direction officials were already heading, as there has been interest in consolidating the city’s police and fire dispatching for years, due to the antiquated system in place at the fire department.
He said that, at the last briefing he had from the committee, the cost of the improvement was estimated to be between $500,000 – $600,000 and said that the money is available in the city’s free cash account. “We get to consolidate police and fire dispatching and in the long run that’s’ a good thing” he said.
Regan said that the biggest change with new mandate is that emergency medical dispatchers will stay on the telephone line with callers who report a medical emergency, to provide guidance for immediate actions the callers can take before an ambulance arrives.
That will require multiple dispatchers on each shift and additional training for all those dispatchers. A limited pool of dispatchers will avoid the costs of training patrol officers, who currently sometimes serve as dispatchers, Nunez said.
He said that the training is extensive and expensive.
Nunez explained that, under the new rules, certification as an emergency medical dispatcher will require a three-day training course in addition to training in the use of the associated software. In addition, he said, emergency medical dispatchers will be required to undergo 16 hours of additional training every year and will have to recertify every two years.
“We would have to train 70 officers and continue that training, which is very costly” he said.
He said that, in addition, the new plan will provide for more professional dispatching as the job requirements have evolved, since officers first started staffing the dispatch desk.
“It’s not just answering a phone call and dispatching a unit any more” he said.
And changes to the dispatching procedure are necessary, Nunez said, because of the aging equipment currently in use, particularly in the Fire Department system. He said that the Fire Department’s system is so obsolete the state won’t even maintain it any more. Regan said “The (emergency dispatch) console looks the same to me as when I started” and said that, although it has been updated for 911 service, “it’s considered obsolete.”
The proposed dispatch center is expected to be located at the Tech Center, where there is already much of the necessary equipment in place.
Regan said “There is already dispatch equipment up there”, she said, which she said was installed when the Tech Center was established, using grant money to provide for an alternate command center. “There’s actually quite a bit of infrastructure in place that we’re going to be able to tap into” she said.
Nunez said that an additional benefit to the dispatching center project is that it positions the city to become a regional dispatch center which, he said, is an objective of state officials.
He explained that regional dispatch centers are being promoted on the state level in large part because of the costs of the enhanced 911 answering centers.
He said that the high costs of creating and maintaining locations to answer 911 calls are borne by the state and officials would like to see regional call centers “so they don’t have to put one in every community.”
Nunez said that, although none of the surrounding communities have yet expressed an interest in cooperating with a dispatch center, the plan the committee has come up with would allow for the eventual inclusion of other communities.
Regan said that other city departments such as the Department of Public Works, the Water Department and the Gas and Electric Light Department could utilize the proposed dispatch center with only relatively small investments in updating their communications systems. “It certainly will have the capability to expand to those departments” she said.
Nunez said that the committee has dealt with the technical aspects of the question having considered the radios necessary, the location for the dispatch center, the manpower needed and the training needed for the staff.
“There is a cost to this but, because of the antiquated equipment we have, you’re going to be spending a lot of that (anyway) to replace the antiquated equipment we have.”
