There’s more to being a 911 dispatcher than answering a call for help.
Dispatchers also monitor emergency radio traffic, track the location of on-duty officers, perform crisis intervention services and provide pre-arrival instructions to first responders — a high-pressure job that doesn’t come with high pay or banker’s hours.
“The responsibilities that are put upon the folks in that room exceed answering a 911 call, and that is probably the least amount of work effort that they do in that center is transaction of a 911 call,” said Barry Ritter, a retired Richmond police officer and former executive director of the Indiana Wireless 911 Board.
With the additional responsibilities comes the need for more space and Montgomery County’s Central Communications Center does not have enough room.
Three options have emerged for the center, which has operated from the Crawfordsville Police Department building for nearly 20 years. The possible choices include expanding the current facilities or moving the center to the future county annex or the South Boulevard county office building.
Center leaders and county administrator Tom Klein asked Ritter, who now co-owns a Hagerstown-based professional services firm for public safety 911 services, to develop a proposal for assessing the sites.
The proposal received a contentious reception by the Central Communications Governing Board, which voted Monday to table the proposal indefinitely over concerns about where to move the center.
Crawfordsville Mayor Todd Barton chided the county for not including city officials in the discussions. He said it was the first time he’s heard of the center.
Barton called on the board to first consider other ongoing issues, such as employee retention, which is a nationwide issue due to the low pay and hours. Salaries for 911 dispatchers nationwide currently range from $24,464 to $30,003, according to employment recruitment site ZipRecruiter.
“I’m not sure how this got this far without discussing this with the city, so I’m not in favor of moving forward with this at this time,” he said. “We’ve got to look at the big picture here and decide our priorities.”
In a testy exchange with Barton, governing board chair John Frey said there was no intention of excluding the city from the talks.
“This is the first I’ve heard of the desire of moving the dispatch center out of where it’s located right now,” Barton replied. “I never heard that until I saw this on the agenda.”
“You’re not meeting with Tom Klein all the time?” Frey responded.
Barton said Klein informed him of the discussions last week. He added that he wouldn’t support paying half of the cost for maintaining the South Boulevard building.
“The infrastructure, the security, everything for that facility would be a lot of money and I’m not interested,” Barton said.
Montgomery County Commissioner Jim Fulwider, who also sits on the governing board, raised concerns about the safety of dispatchers coming and going from the annex during overnight shifts.
The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office was also discussed as another possible site.
Apart from the location issues, Fulwider said the board should still consider studying the center’s technology needs, which was part of Ritter’s proposal.
The center’s radio system is at the end of its life and Ritter’s study proposed identifying operational and service requirements and areas where new technology may be required.
