New 911 director lays out his plans

By ED RUNYAN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- New 911 director Michael Dolhancryk told Trumbull County commissioners about his plans to build his department's reputation and begin handling wireless 911 calls as soon as fall 2007.
Dolhancryk, hired this fall, said a major step in building the department will be to start the two-year process of being certified by the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies. The certification would demonstrate that the center meets the highest standards in the nation, he said.
He would like to begin to use money from the 32-cent per customer per month wireless charge in Ohio to refine the county's geographic information system map. That will enable 911 call takers to give more precise information to police officers.
That is an important step to persuading the police and fire departments from throughout the county to allow the county system to do their dispatching, he said during a budget hearing Tuesday.
The primary complaint the departments have given for not joining the county system is that dispatchers at the center don't know the areas they dispatch as well as a dispatcher in the community, Dolhancryk said. With the better map, they won't have to know the area because the technology will identify the locations in many more ways.
Hiring plans
Dolhancryk said he would like to begin to hire dispatchers for the eventual move to wireless 911 service with one supervisor and two part-time dispatchers coming on board in 2007. This accounts for some of his requested budget of 2,098,277, compared with the 1,876,491 the department got this year. Dolhancryk said such costs would be eventually paid for by the 32-cent wireless surcharge money.
He said he believes the county 911 center is the best place for the wireless 911 calls to go because of its larger number of dispatchers working at a time there, compared with the number working in most of the smaller dispatching centers. A single incident could produce 15 wireless phone calls at the same time, he noted.
A third part of his presentation was a request to renovate the 911 center on Howland Wilson Road in Howland to make it more professional, and because he would like for it to house the Emergency Management Agency and be a command post where top fire, sheriff and other officials could map out strategies during major emergencies.
The renovation would cost around 800,000. Dolhancryk said he would like architectural work to begin on the project in 2007 and for construction to occur in 2008. But first, county officials must get together to talk about whether the 911 center is the best location for the offices to be combined, he said.
runyan@vindy.com