Fire Rescue News - Atlantic, Cumberland counties considering plans for countywide emergency dispatch services

Absecon Police Chief Joseph Cowan shows the older equipment at the dispatch center

Posted: Monday, May 16, 2011 11:58 pm

By LEE PROCIDA, Staff Writer pressofAtlanticCity.com

 dispatching systems - dating to the early 1980s - currently used by Absecon, Egg Harbor Township and Pleasantville. The equipment must be completely replaced or the municipalities will have to get dispatch services elsewhere.

Officials are hoping Atlantic County can finally organize that service.

"We need to move quickly on this," said Vince Jones, Atlantic County's Office of Emergency Management coordinator. "I'm hoping that by this time next year we'll be up and running and dispatching for several municipalities."

Counties throughout the state have sought to consolidate emergency response services, which they believe will provide cheaper, more efficient systems for residents.

Cumberland County is reviewing a feasibility study on consolidated dispatch services completed in March. A public presentation on the plan will be part of the Board of Chosen Freeholders work session meeting today. Under discussion is a county dispatch for Vineland, Millville and Bridgeton police.

Cumberland already has a dispatch center answering 911 calls from cellular phones and all land lines in the county outside Vineland. It relays police calls to the appropriate departments and does some dispatching for fire and EMS.

Ocean County already answers 911 calls for nearly all its 33 local governments, relaying the messages to police and fire departments in some communities and emergency services for others.

"We were able to do it much more cost-effectively than trying to duplicate that service 33 times," said Ocean County Freeholder John "Jack" Kelly.

Cape May County has considered the issue in the past, seeking grant money for feasibility studies. But its municipalities mostly handle their own 911 calls.

Learning from others

In January, Atlantic County formed a committee of officials to work on the project. Since then, they have looked at several potential properties for the center and talked to counties that have already established their own countywide services.

Ultimately the goal is to close the dozen dispatch centers currently operating in the county and have all 23 municipalities use the one location for answering calls and sending out emergency services. The county would rehire all or most of the dispatchers from the closed centers.

"For many, many years the police departments didn't want to give up their dispatch," said Atlantic County Sheriff Frank Balles. "But as our budgets get smaller and calls for service are larger, I would tell you that just about every chief in this county is for going into a centralized dispatch service."

Questions remain about how much the service would cost and how the municipalities would have to reorganize some operations currently handled by local dispatchers. The service would likely be paid for by the countywide tax assessed to every municipality, regardless of use.

But the county is expecting most towns to welcome the centralized dispatch.

"We would have a centralized dispatch service up and running if 10 years ago the municipalities had wanted it," said County Executive Dennis Levinson. "But now it's come back to life, and I would hope that the municipalities would see the benefits of a centralized dispatch service."

"I am very enthusiastic right now with the positive responses we're getting from most of the municipalities," Levinson said.

Many area chiefs of police and elected officials said having one central hub would make emergency responses more efficient throughout the county.

In the case of a countywide emergency, it's the difference between having to make a dozen phone calls to organize resources or only one, Jones said. Having one location that every government funds would also allow for the purchase of better technology.

At the end of the month, county officials expect to visit the Gloucester County Emergency Response Center, a state-of-the-art facility in Clayton Borough that dispatches police, fire and EMS services for all of that county's 24 municipalities. The facility, established in 1980 and constantly improved since, has been viewed as a model of efficiency and organization.

Sharing benefits

Thomas Butts, the emergency response coordinator for Gloucester County, said not every municipality bought into the center at first, but over time each local government joined to save money and improve services.

"Keeping up with technology is a challenge," he said, but having one location provides economies of scale that allow the center to purchase the best systems available.

The sophistication is obvious in the police dispatching room, which resembles a high-tech control room from movies such as "The Bourne Identity" or TV series "24."

Each dispatcher sits at a desk with a bank of six computer monitors arranged in front of them and another monitor to their right, each of which displays different information. A personal light, heating and cooling system keeps the workers comfortable for their long shifts.

When a call comes in, a map on one monitor zooms directly to the location of the call's source. The dispatcher takes the call and relays the message to the appropriate police department within seconds.

Before that technology was available, municipal governments in Gloucester County worried about losing longtime dispatchers who knew their areas well and could dispatch emergency services efficiently, Butts said.

That worry is still a factor in Atlantic County, where officials believe local people who know the area well are an invaluable asset that may be lost by moving to one central location. In Gloucester County, they simply hired those dispatchers to work at the new center.

"What we tried to do, instead of reinventing the wheel," Butts said, "was we literally plucked someone out of a chair there and put them in a chair here, except they had the advantage of sophisticated technology."

The difference between those systems and the constantly updated technology found in Gloucester County is dramatic. Absecon's dispatch computers bear the long-lapsed sophistication of movies such as "Alien" and the original "Star Trek" TV series.

Dispatchers watch small black screens where only green lettering appears, and they press bulky plastic buttons to relay messages. The machines are massive but have little of the computing power found in a lightweight PC.

"Come over after you see Gloucester and you'll laugh," said Absecon Police Chief Joseph Cowan. "I think you'll even see some of the Scotch tape holding ours together."

Absecon's system gets the job done for now, but not for much longer.

It will cost about $50,000 to buy the replacement system Cowan wants, but it's a cost the city would like to avoid. Cowan said there is a contingency plan to temporarily partner with Galloway, if the county can get its service online by the beginning of 2012.

"We're kind of keeping our fingers crossed," Cowan said.

Saving money

 

The Gloucester facility also dispatches for Buena Borough, Buena Vista Township and Folsom Borough. Weymouth Township will start using the service in June, Egg Harbor City in July, and Estell Manor may soon follow.

Buena Borough was first to use the center, closing its own dispatch facility last year to save money. The others chose to do so because the service they all shared, Mid-Atlantic Communications in Egg Harbor City, will close this summer.

Mullica Township backed out of its contract with Mid-Atlantic earlier this year. Without the $240,500 it paid for the service, the other towns using it could no longer afford their increased share and were forced to find other providers.

But each ultimately saved money by moving to Gloucester or, in Mullica's case, Galloway Township. Both Mullica and Egg Harbor City will save more than $50,000 a year with their new dispatch providers.

Mullica Mayor Jim Brown said while it was not a popular move at first, with six full-time dispatchers losing their jobs and towns scrambling to find new providers, it had to be done to bring costs down. He added that he thinks moving to a countywide system would likely result in even more savings.

"It's a great idea," he said. "I think that when you look at it it'll probably be more efficient than everyone trying to do their own thing."

Contact Lee Procida: 609-457-8707 LProcida@pressofac.com

Dispatchers Sheryl Neely, left, of Franklin Township, and Rick Schubert, of Washington Township, work on multiple computer screens Thursday at the Gloucester County Emergency Response Center in Clayton. Several Atlantic County towns, including Buena Borough and Egg Harbor City, have recently transferred their 911 services to the Gloucester County hub.