By Peter H. Milliken

milliken@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene will now oversee the county’s 911 center and the appointment of its emergency dispatchers.

“We think public safety, which would be the sheriff’s department, would be a better fit to run a call-dispatch center,” explained Commissioner Carol Rimedio-Righetti at the panel’s Tuesday meeting.

“He would know more than we, as commissioners, about dispatching” emergency calls, she said of the sheriff, adding that the 13 dispatchers’ jobs will be secure in the transition.

Although the commissioners are switching oversight of dispatching operations from themselves to the sheriff, effective Sunday, Righetti said the commissioners and their 911 director, Maggi McGee, will remain in charge of the center’s electronic equipment.

“Safety forces should control the 911 room, the dispatch center,” said David Ditzler chairman of the commissioners.

“I’m fine with it. That was the commissioners’ decision,” said McGee, who did not attend the commissioners’ meeting but was reached by telephone afterward.

“I make sure that the equipment is functioning,” said McGee, who has been county 911 director since the inception of 911 here March 23, 1994.

“We’re going to be doing a lot of upgrades” of 911 technology in 2015, McGee said.

“I’m always looking for Mahoning County to move forward.”

“I’m a little nervous about the changes, but change is good. It’s time to move forward,” said Petra Walsh, a county 911 dispatcher since May 2000, who attended the commissioners’ meeting.

“We work with them [deputy sheriffs] on a daily basis, you know, one on one, on the radio. I mean, this just puts us a little bit closer with them,” Walsh said.

The change affects only the 911 center in the county administration building, and not the eight other 911 answering points located at, and supervised by, various local police departments, Righetti said.

Greene said the 911 dispatching center in the county administration building has suffered from a lack of night and weekend supervision, but his turn commanders can provide that oversight from now on.

By putting its 911 center under the sheriff’s jurisdiction, the county will save about $10,000 a year by not having to pay for two Law Enforcement Automated Data System access points, one for the sheriff and one for the 911 center, the sheriff said.

Maj. William Cappabianca of the sheriff’s office said he’d like to see the dispatching center in the administration building directly dispatch fire and ambulance calls to save time, rather than transfer them to other dispatching centers, “if it is cost-effective to taxpayers.”

The sheriff said he favors the eventual consolidation of all the county’s 911 answering points into a single answering point with one backup location “if it’s cost effective.”

In other action, the commissioners appointed Richard E. Edwards, a former Austintown trustee, and John A. Boccieri, a former congressman, to the Western Reserve Port Authority for four-year terms beginning Jan. 1.

Edwards and Boccieri replace Don Hanni III and Patrick Pellin, whose terms expire at the end of the year.

The term of Atty. David Detec, an appointee of the Trumbull County commissioners to the eight-member WRPA board, expires at the end of this year, but Trumbull Commissioner Frank Fuda said Detec likely will be reappointed.