Without Buena Vista, Buena Dispatch May Get Centralized

Monday, November 03 2008 @ 05:43 pm EST

Contributed by: CBrining

From the Atlantic City Press Published: Monday, November 03, 2008

By JULIET FLETCHER Staff Writer, 856-237-9020

BUENA BOROUGH - The town's emergency dispatch is at a crossroads. Two months ago, the borough's nearby neighbor, Buena Vista, said it no longer would use Buena Borough's dispatch center to handle emergency calls.

Now Buena's leaders say they are considering a plan that would move the center to the other end of the county. And one local dispatcher says any future plan has to account for how the area's volunteer fire companies operate.

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Take one especially confusing location, says Cindy Moriarity, a dispatcher in Buena. At the intersection of Route 40 and Route 54, she says, four different fire companies each cover one of the corners.

"Every time we'd have a call in around that area," she explained by phone, "we'd have to decide what company was responsible for the exact location."

As each emergency would break, Moriarity said, she or her colleagues manning the dispatch phone had to make the right call to the right company. But with volunteer fire companies from Minotola, Landisville, East Vineland and Richland all operating in the area, she said, mistakes can happen.

When those mistakes brought fire companies over their service boundaries, she recalls, they sometimes would complain.

"What's sad is, you need to know the area," she said. "In my experience, local knowledge is really needed to make those decisions."

Joseph Santagata, a borough council member, said Sunday he has been part of the town's effort to maintain the tiny dispatch center, run from a closet-sized space inside the Buena Police Department. In September, Buena Vista Mayor Chuck Chiarello said the town would dissolve a longstanding shared-service arrangement that meant Buena Vista and Weymouth Township's emergency calls were picked up in Buena. Another town, Folsom, remains with the Buena center.

Last week, Santagata said he heard news from the county that could chart a new way of receiving emergency service but would spell the end of the local dispatch center.

Amid plans for a centralized emergency hub at Atlantic City International Airport, Santa- gata said officials from Atlantic County have informed local towns that a countywide dispatch center is possible.

"There are around 19 dispatch centers in the county, many like ours with just one person on call," Santagata said. A county-funded study has concluded it would be feasible to move those services to one central location, he said. At a recent meeting, he said, Buena and other towns gave unanimous approval to the next step, an implementation study.

Even if the possibility of a centralized dispatch is years away, Santagata, a former police chief in the borough, said he sees it as a reason not to abandon the town's local service this year, despite the lack of funds paid previously by Buena Vista.

"Based on the progress of the county's plan, I have firmly said that we should keep Buena's dispatch operating, even if we don't have Buena Vista on board," he said.

For now, Moriarity says she thinks the countywide plan looks to be the only way forward.

"I think it'll probably mean Buena dispatch gets disbanded," she said. "I do agree it's probably going to happen."

And Santagata agrees that future emergency dispatch will lack the local touch.

"I think you will probably lose some of that local knowledge," he said. "But hopefully, the technology's so good these days, the person answering the phone can be sitting anywhere."

E-mail Juliet Fletcher: JFletcher@pressofac.com