Published: October 27, 2009 11:26 pm      

911 centers get grants

While appreciative, officials in Boyd, Greenup point to many unmet financial needs

Ashland — The 911 centers in Greenup and Boyd counties this week were awarded state Community Mobile Radio Service Board grants to improve their services.

Agency directors say the funds will help upgrade facilities and technology in the area, but much more financial assistance is needed.

Emergency dispatch centers have suffered financially in recent years as more consumers have switched from land-line telephones to wireless devices. The centers are primarily funded by surcharges on land-line phone bills.

Greenup County e-911 was awarded $6,558, while the Regional Public Safety Communications Center, which serves Boyd County and Ashland, will receive $40,216.

Greenup Director Scott Brown said the grant will pay to upgrade security at the 911 center inside the Greenup County Courthouse. It will pay for swipe locks on all doors and the software to manage the new security system as well as the cost of issuing photo identification swipe cards to employees and law enforcement officers.

Sandy Ott, director of the RPSCC, said her agency will use the funding to replace the furniture and radio consoles in the 911 center. Ott said the furniture that houses the agency’s equipment and radios is more than 30 years old.

Motorola donated the furniture when the center was founded in the early 1980s, Ott said. It was built to hold only radio console button panels and not the sophisticated computer, radio and telephone technology in use today.

“It has just reached its limit. There isn’t much we can do to make it fit new technology. When we put in new radios, we cut down the furniture and added new countertops to try to make it fit new technology. We’ve gotten to the point where we can’t do that any longer,” Ott said.

Both directors said the grants were not the only assistance they had asked for from the CMRS board.

Brown said the security upgrade grant was just one of four Greenup officials applied for and it was the lowest priority request.

“That’s wonderful, but it’s not the most needed one,” he said. “We’ll take it, but we have a lot more important things that we need.”

The agency most desperately needs $65,000 to replace GIS equipment and software it now uses. If the upgrades are not made soon, he said, he anticipates the center will not be able to meet state submission requirements for mapping or pass its annual state audit.

Brown said the e-911 center is working from software more than a decade old, and as a result, it also has no records management function.

“Any records management we do is still hands on with file folders,” he said. “Any time a police officer opens a case and it has to have something entered into the National Crime Information Computer, it’s this huge paper trail. If we had a records management function here we could do that for them.”

Those upgrades are estimated at approximately $53,000, he said.

Greenup e-911 also requested $24,000 to set up a supervisor terminal to allow the deputy director to not only supervise and meet her statistical requirements, but to assist other dispatchers.

“Currently, she has to ask a dispatcher to get up from a terminal so she can do her statistical duties, so we lose a dispatcher every time that happens,” Brown said.

Ott said her agency’s needs are not as dire as Greenup’s but there are things on its wish lists.

RPSCC now has 15 dispatchers, but Ott said she would like to see one or two more to have four full-time dispatchers on shift at all times.

The agency does not have the financial capacity to do it right now, Ott said, adding, “Because we made a promise to the fiscal court to not come back and ask for more funding for 10 years, we’re going to leave it at the rate we’re at now. We buckle down and do what needs to be done.”

Upgrades are also needed at all FIVCO dispatch centers to create a consortium that will allow each agency to eliminate some recurring monthly costs and reroute and transfer calls quicker.

Ott said individual 911 centers would be able to more easily share information with one another, and that would improve security.

“We’d be able to be backup centers for each other. Our calls would automatically be transferred and answered,” Ott said.

It will cost an about $3.5 million to implement a consortium, according to Brown.

Both Brown and Ott expressed hope the General Assembly will eventually change the way local 911 centers are funded.

“It’s unfair that a first-response system — a very important system like this — is so under funded it doesn’t appear to be taken seriously by the state legislature,” Brown said.

“It needs to be a higher priority. We’re talking about public health and safety and security. I just can’t understand why it’s not funded better.”

CARRIE STAMBAUGH can be reached at cstambaugh@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2653.