Regional Police/Fire/Ambulance Dispatching Center Proposed

By Andrew Gorosko

In view of the Governor M. Jodi Rell’s call for groups of towns to regionalize their public services when feasible to control costs amid difficult economic times, the town’s director of emergency communications is proposing that a group of towns including Newtown combine forces to more efficiently dispatch their police, fire, and ambulance services.

Maureen A. Will said this week that such a combined approach for emergency dispatching would be worthwhile, providing cost benefits to the municipalities participating in such a venture.

Ms Will was scheduled to present her regional dispatching proposal to members of the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials (HVCEO) at its monthly meeting at the Brookfield Town Hall on the afternoon of March 19, after the deadline for this edition of The Bee.

The ten-town regional planning agency comprises Newtown, Bethel, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Danbury, New Fairfield, New Milford, Redding, Ridgefield, and Sherman.

Currently in Newtown, the town dispatches its police, fire, and ambulance calls, plus all 911 calls, from the emergency communications center at Town Hall South at 3 Main Street.

The town formerly operated separate dispatching centers for the police at the police station at 3 Main Street, and for the fire and ambulance services at Edmond Town Hall at 45 Main Street.

In December 2001, the town consolidated those two facilities to centralize, modernize, and streamline its dispatching. Two dispatchers staff the center around the clock, working 12-hour shifts.

The state is offering incentives to towns to combine their dispatching services in a regional approach, Ms Will said.

She suggested that Newtown join forces with two or three other towns in the region to jointly dispatch their police, fire, and ambulance calls. Such a joint venture would involve combining personnel and equipment to operate a multitown system, she said.

In some of the more rural parts of the state, multiple towns participate in regional dispatching systems for fire and ambulance calls, she said. In those areas, resident state troopers provide police services.

The approach that Ms Will recommends would add a police component to regional emergency dispatching.

She is well versed in police work, having retired as a police captain in 2008, after having served for 30 years with the Brookfield Police Department.

Ms Will said she hopes to keep a central dispatching facility in Newtown with nearby towns, possibly Bethel and Brookfield, joining Newtown in dispatching their emergency calls from Newtown.

The dispatchers in a regional center would be able to train each other about their respective towns, she said, adding that she expects the level of service provided by such a facility would be better than the service that individual towns provide.

A dispatching center of at least 3,500 square feet would be needed, possibly at the Fairfield Hills core campus, she said. That could be in the form of new construction or a converted structure, she said.

The towns in the area interested in exploring the concept of a regional police/fire/ambulance dispatching center would sign an agreement permitting the state to conduct a state-funded feasibility study on the matter, she said.

“This is the right time for it…We’ve all been hit by economic turmoil and this is one way to ease some of the burden on the municipalities,” she said.

Besides funding a feasibility study of the regional dispatching concept, the state would provide subsidies toward constructing and operating a dispatching center, she said.

At least three towns would need to agree to explore the regionalization concept in order to conduct a feasibility study on it, she said.

George Pohorilak, director of statewide emergency telecommunications for Connecticut, said there are eight regional dispatching networks in the state, he said.

In this general area, Litchfield County Dispatch, Inc in Litchfield handles fire/ambulance dispatching for 21 municipalities. Also, the Northwest Public Safety Communications Center in Prospect handles fire/ambulance dispatching for six towns. The towns covered by those dispatching centers have resident state troopers for police protection, he said.

In the Groton area, a regional dispatching center handles fire/ambulance calls, as well as calls for several local police departments, he said.

Regional emergency dispatching provides its member towns with cost savings, Mr Pohorilak said. “There’s a lot of interest in regionalization,” he added.

Regionalization would be a positive move, but it is up to the municipalities in a given area to decide whether to regionalize, he noted.

Mr Pohorilak termed regionalization “a better way to handle communications.”