Trumbull 911 director ups the ante

WARREN — Trumbull County 911 director Michael Dolhancryk, continuing his effort to get some of the smaller emergency dispatching centers in the county to join his operation, said it could soon be time to cut off some funding support to these centers.

Speaking today to the 911 Review Board, Dolhancryk said he will recommend that the board at some point discontinue the roughly $150,000 per year in free maintenance the county provides to the smaller dispatching centers for their dispatching equipment.

He said the county’s current 911 plan expires May 31, and he is recommending that the next agreement eliminate the free maintenance to the centers in Liberty, Girard, Newton Falls, Warren Township, Niles, Hubbard and Lordstown.

The exception would be that one of the larger centers, such as Niles or Warren, might be able to keep its dispatching money if it agreed to be the county center’s backup.

Dolhancryk, who has been director since last fall, said he is taking the position that the county should no longer subsidize the dispatching operations of departments that do not meet standards of the National Fire Protection Association. The standards require at least two dispatchers to be on duty at a time at dispatching centers that handle fire calls.

Dolhancryk said he hopes the dispatching centers will lose the fear of having their calls dispatched by the county 911 center by later in the year, when he expects to have an improved geographic information system (GIS) map in use.

At today’s meeting, the board approved a resolution recommending to county commissioners that they spend $450,000 of the money provided through a 32-cent, per-customer, per-month wireless charge in Ohio for the mapping project.

Dolhancryk said he hopes to have the project completed by this fall, and for a couple of dispatching centers to make the switch to the county system by the start of next year.

He said the improved GIS should eliminate officer safety concerns that have been raised by departments that say dispatchers in a countywide system don’t know their specific communities well enough to dispatch calls there effectively.

Getting accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies within the next two years should also convince the dispatching centers that the county 911 center will remain a reliable center for years to come, Dolhancryk said.

With the new GIS, dispatchers will be able to pinpoint call locations much better than now, and dispatchers won’t need to know an area personally to be able to provide officers with good information, Dolhancryk has said. The system will also be useful to other departments that use mapping, such as the county’s tax map department, Dolhancryk added.

He said one of the dispatching centers pays around $260,000 per year to have one dispatcher on duty at all times. The county dispatch center could provide dispatching to that community with multiple dispatchers available at all times for about half that cost, Dolhancryk said.