Regionalizing 911 Dispatching: is it in Saybrook's Future?

OLD SAYBROOK - In Connecticut, the Land of Steady Habits, moves to save money through regionalizing services often have an uphill fight. In Old Saybrook, the latest battleground may be 911 dispatching.

First Selectman Carl Fortuna, Jr., attended a public presentation at the State Police Academy in late January at which he learned that in Pennsylvania, there is one emergency call center for every 250,000 people. In the Town of Old Saybrook, there is one emergency call center serving just about 10,000 people.

"Our dispatchers do a great job and I want to make sure that service continues. But I also want to make sure our community needs are being met in the most cost-effective manner," said Fortuna.

In Connecticut, there are 106 municipal and regional centers that dispatch local 911 calls. According to a January state consultant's report, consolidation of local dispatch centers into regional dispatch centers is a move that could improve dispatch efficiency and save state funds now used to support communications equipment replacement costs.

Like other state legislative moves to urge or require regionalization of local functions, this may be a good idea whose implementation faces both political and technological challenges. Local radio and communications systems are made by different firms and may be incompatible. Dispatcher labor contracts are all locally negotiated and, as a result, include different hourly rates and benefits including pension and health insurance provisions.

To help investigate the technological, political, and financial circumstances of the current local dispatch system-and to make recommendations with respect to their consolidation-the state Department of Public Safety Office of Statewide Emergency Telecommunications hired a consulting firm, L.R. Kimball, to investigate the concept's feasibility.

The L.R. Kimball Consolidation Feasibility Study, completed in January, provides statistics to help explain the current system's inefficiencies: Today, 37 percent of the state's 106 local emergency dispatch centers handle fewer than four 911 calls per hour. The reports chart of call center volume lists the Town of Old Saybrook's Police Department as having the fifth lowest 911-call average of the state's local dispatch centers with nine 911 calls per day.

As a point of comparison, the report charts Clinton's police department as averaging 11 911 calls per day and Madison's, 13 calls per day.

The report's purpose was to assess the current emergency call center environment from an operations and technology standpoint and to recommend regional call center configuration that would significantly reduce the number of local call centers.

Fortuna said he will ask the Board of Selectmen within the next month to form an ad hoc committee to study the issue of emergency call center regionalization. The goal of the study would be to identify the advantages and disadvantages of call center consolidation and determine if there are willing towns with which to voluntarily partner.

Fortuna is concerned that if the town doesn't study the issue now and have recommendations ready, it could face a state-imposed solution and be unable to offer options that would be a better fit.

The L.R. Kimball emergency call center Consolidation Feasibility Study is available for public review on the state Department of Public Safety website, www.ct.gov/dps (search Consolidation Feasibility Study).

The town's selectmen are currently in negotiations with representatives of C.O.P.S., the police dispatchers union, on the terms of a new contract.