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Livingston, La., 911 in trouble

By Bob Anderson
The Advocate
Copyright 2006 Capital City Press
All Rights Reserved

SATSUMA, La. — Emergency operator Kyle Glascock calmed the woman trapped in her car while rescuers rushed to extricate her.

During the six minutes Glascock stayed on the line, other 911 calls continued to ring at the Livingston Parish 911 Center. Because of the center’s setup, radio dispatchers managed to answer those calls while also handling radio traffic for police, firefighters and other emergency personnel across the parish.

That’s not an unusual situation at the center, where boredom can turn to bedlam “in one-hundredth of a second,” Glascock said.

Unlike many 911 operations, the Livingston center doubles as a radio room for the Sheriff’s Office, eight municipal police departments and 11 parish fire departments, said Ronnie Cotton, the center’s director.

A centralized system “is the best scenario” said Cotton, who wants to keep the center’s interlocking functions, despite serious financial problems.

“It cuts down on dropped calls and misinformation,” he said of the center’s dual capacity. “It quickens response.”

When a call ties up the 911 operator, the next 911 call rolls to one of the dispatchers. Though the dispatchers have other specific responsibilities, their cross-training enables them to assist not only the 911 operator, but to help each other when a particular agency gets flooded with calls, Cotton said.

People provide information to each other in the same room rather than having to make phone calls, Sheriff Willie Graves said. While a caller is still on the phone providing information, the 911 operator can tell a dispatcher to get a police unit rolling to the location.

“It’s light years ahead of what we used to have,” Graves said.

Funding is the problem

The center runs both 911 and dispatch operations on just the phone tax money dedicated to a 911 operation, according to 911 Board members.

Fred Banks, head of the parish’s 911 Board, said the center may have to lay off dispatchers if it doesn’t get financial help from the parish’s municipalities and fire departments.

Some of those local entities saved money when the center took over their dispatching duties last year; however, those entities haven’t contributed to the center’s cost of handling that dispatching, Banks said.

Unfortunately, the 911 Board made no formal financial agreements with those local agencies before the board moved ahead with plans to create the center and take on the dispatch responsibilities, said Jeff Wesley, a former board member.

“If we build it, they will come” was the 911 Board’s attitude, Denham Springs City Councilman Robert Poole said. “Now we have a state-of-the art facility,” but lack the money to fund it.

The biggest beneficiaries of the change are the City of Denham Springs and the District 4 Fire Department, both of which saved money by laying off their dispatchers when the center opened. In fact, the center hired the people those agencies laid off, according to 911 Board members.

If those local agencies had given the center the money that the center saved them on dispatchers, “we probably would be in good shape,” board member Don Dedon said.

Shortly before the center opened last year, 911 officials sought financial help from Denham Springs and District 4.

The Denham Springs Council agreed to contribute $120,000 and District 4 agreed to contribute $80,000, but with a caveat: Both said they wouldn’t contribute unless other agencies benefiting from the center did as well.

The 911 Board collected nothing from the other agencies, so Denham Springs and District 4 withheld their money, according to board members.

Next, an attempt by the 911 Board to raise the tax on cell phones in Livingston Parish ran afoul of a state cap on such tariffs.

More recently, the board sent bills for its services to the parish’s fire departments, basing those bills on how many calls the center dispatched for those agencies, said Derral Jones, a new member of the 911 Board who has concentrated on solving the board’s financial problems.

Many of the fire departments balked at the bills, saying they barely have enough money to pay for fuel, said Brian Drury, president of the Livingston Parish Fire Chiefs Association.

“There’s none of us who don’t want to pay; it’s just that we can’t,” Drury said, adding that volunteer firefighters already have to hold fundraisers to augment their property-tax revenues and to keep their trucks operating.

Seeking solutions

Discussions on funding continue between the 911 Board and local governmental agencies. So far, the board has received no money from fire departments or municipalities, but has made progress in the discussions, according to board members.

Denham Springs Mayor Jimmy Durbin, who supported the 911 Board’s request to the city for funds last year, said he will do so again before the City Council.

“I think it’s an appropriate subsidy,” Durbin said.

Officials with District 4 also indicate they will be willing to provide some help.

The 911 Board has managed to pay its 911 operators and dispatchers; however, it’s gotten behind on long-term debts for the equipment and software it purchased to open the center last year, said Roy Chustz, the board’s accountant.

He said the board needs about $200,000 more to pay its debts this year and another $200,000 for next year.

Though the 911 Board recently agreed to ask voters to pass a 5-mill property tax to help fund its operations, that tax would provide no short-term help, Chustz said.

If passed today, the soonest that tax could be levied would be 2007 and the first of the income would not arrive until the end of that year, the accountant said.

Staffing the center

An agency that has been helpful is the Sheriff’s Office, Cotton said.

The Sheriff agreed to forgive debts owed by the board from when the 911 operation had been housed temporarily at the Sheriff’s Office prior to opening of the center, Cotton said.

When the center opened, the Sheriff’s office transferred its dispatchers to the center and the sheriff continues to pay them.

The sheriff’s dispatchers handle not only the radio communication with sheriff’s office units, but also with most municipal police departments.

The exception to that is the Denham Springs Police Department, for which the 911 Board pays a dispatcher for each of the four shifts.

The 911 Board provides another dispatcher on each shift to handle fire calls on the east side of the parish and a third to handle fire calls on the west side the parish.

When combined with the main 911 operator, that totals 16 communications people, in addition to Cotton, whose salaries are funded by the 911 Board.

Cotton said it’s in the best interest of the parish to maintain both the center’s 911 call-taking and dispatching functions.

Having to cut back on personnel would adversely affect those operations, he said.

He said two people on a shift would be enough to handle 911 call-taking, but other agencies would have to resume having their own dispatchers.

Three people on a shift wouldn’t be enough to handle 911 calls and to dispatch for Denham Springs Police, 11 fire departments and their medical responders, Cotton said.

As a 911 operator, Glascock agrees.

When a wreck occurs on Interstate 12, calls stream in from almost everyone with a cell phone who passes the collision, Glascock said.

Each call has to be answered and details taken, because the caller could be providing important new information or reporting a different wreck, the 911 operator said.

Often, subsequent callers add information about injuries, a fire that has erupted or someone being trapped. That information is important in determining who needs to respond with what equipment, Glascock said.

Traffic backup from one wreck can cause another, so the operator has to be careful to get vehicle descriptions, even when the location appears to be the same, he said.

Glascock doesn’t want someone trapped in a car with no emergency personnel dispatched to the scene.