By Jennifer Avilla
The Beaumont Enterprise (Texas)
Copyright 2006 The Beaumont Enterprise
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
In March 2007, Beaumont will join similar-sized Texas cities when it consolidates its fire, police and EMS calls into one civilian-manned dispatch center.
However, the city and firefighters union are at odds over the plan -- just one friction point in a larger debate between the two parties over contractual issues involving salaries, benefits and working days.
The city maintains the $2.3 million move to consolidate is progressive and efficient, while firefighters said hiring civilians to take calls could compromise safety.
“In my opinion, it’s going to make EMS and fire calls slower in response time,” said Galen Key, president of the International Association of Firefighters Local Union No. 399. “Civilians are not familiar with the system. The civilian dispatch in the police department has a lot of turnover.”
But City Manager Kyle Hayes said combining the center will end duplicity of the two separate centers and allow for better communication between the fire and police departments on bigger jobs.
“We are operating two different centers. We could operate one that is cross-trained,” Hayes said. “It just makes better business sense. We know this has worked all over the country, and you would have better communication and coordination to have police, fire and EMS calls to all be handled by the same group.”
And by using trained civilians to answer phone calls, it could put the 10 firefighters who now answer calls back on the trucks and responding to the calls in person.
“We are paying firefighters to answer calls, and we need those firefighters working in suppression on fire trucks,” Hayes said, adding the firefighters would not be fired.
But Key said he doubts the city will train the civilians efficiently and contends firefighters now working dispatch would be fired and not put on the trucks.
Key said the union does not oppose the combined center, but he is not comfortable with replacing firefighters with civilians.
“It will slow down 9-1-1 responses,” Key said. “We feel it’s against the law for the city manager to do this; under civil service, sworn personnel in many positions are protected.”
About three months ago, the union filed a grievance with the city over replacing the firefighters with civilian dispatchers, Key said.
The arguments will be heard by an arbitrator, who will decide whether the combined dispatch center could hire civilians in place of the firefighters.
Hayes said, “The 10 dispatchers in fire will go back into the fire service working on a fire truck and police already have a civilian dispatch operation. Our plan is to combine into a joint civilian dispatch operation. The firefighters have filed a grievance trying to stop us from doing that.”
With dispatch
The combined dispatch center, to be housed in the municipal building’s second floor, has been in the works for years, Hayes said, adding the city hired a consultant to determine whether the project was worth doing.
“We took time to put together the specifications for the software and hardware,” he said. “It’s a timely process. It’s extremely important that you do it right.”
The police department’s dispatch services will move into the facility today, and the calls for fire, EMS and police will all come into the facility in the spring.
According to a study that Emergency Services Consulting Inc. did for the city in June 2004, Beaumont’s fire dispatch answered about 2.4 calls per hour as opposed to the police dispatch, which answered about 30.8 per hour.
The police answered calls at 6 seconds on average, the study said, while the fire department’s response was at 1.8 seconds, which “exceeds” the industry call answering standard of 10 seconds.
The study also indicated fire dispatch was “top-heavy with management and supervisory staff” with a 3-to-2 ratio of management/supervisors to dispatch staff, while the police had a ratio of 1-to-6, with a notation that “vacant positions create problems maintaining minimum staffing levels.”
In eight similar-sized Texas cities with populations ranging from 99,536 to 136,674, managers of combined dispatch centers said they have no problem employing civilians. The other eight cities are Richardson, Wichita Falls, Abilene, McAllen, Carrollton, Waco, Mesquite and Grand Prairie.
In Abilene, a city with a population of about 2,000 more than Beaumont, the dispatch center has been combined since 1988 and started out with both civilian and firefighters answering calls, said Donna Littlefield, 9-1-1 division manager.
After a few years, the firefighters quit and spots were filled by civilians, who are certified and trained in numerous emergency fields, Littlefield said.
“We have got medical flip charts that give us step-by-step on whatever their emergency is,” she said. “We saved numerous lives down here -- from ... CPR to Heimlich maneuver. We helped bring babies into this world.”
Throughout her years at the center, civilians have never jeopardized lives, Littlefield said.
Harvey Eisner, editor-in-chief of Fire House Magazine based in New York, said more cities are combining dispatch centers nationwide for communication and productivity reasons.
“It’s savings and money for duplicating equipment,” Eisner said. “If you have to coordinate things, you are right there face-to-face instead of talking on a phone. There are many times that the police might have information and it gets mixed up in transmission.”
While the dispatch center would be cost-efficient in terms of duplication, overall it would cost the city more money because the 10 firefighters would be back on the trucks while the city hired civilians to replace them on the phone, Hayes said.
Terminating the firefighters working dispatch is something Eisner warns against, but agreed that firefighters are more useful in the field than answering phones.
"(Putting the firefighters on the trucks) would be a substantial credit to life safety,” said Eisner, whose monthly magazine is distributed to about 75,000 firefighters. “You can do more with more people on the scene than less, of course. It might be better to have more firefighters on the scene of the fire than to discuss who was taking the call.”
Sgt. Esmeralda Guerra, with dispatch communications in McAllen, said civilians can handle the calls exactly as the fire department pleases, so long as they follow guidelines specified in each kind of emergency.
“I think it really does come down to both agencies working together and training personnel,” said Guerra, whose department has been combined for about six years. “I don’t think we’ve had any problem with a civilian handling the job.”
Unwelcome change
But not everyone in McAllen was happy with the change.
Juan Salinas, assistant fire marshal in McAllen, said firefighters are treated like “second-class citizens” when it comes to the combined dispatch center.
“Now we don’t have designated dispatchers for fire department only,” he said. "(The dispatchers) are there for everybody. (The police) have a lot more runs than us. “
And it takes longer for the dispatchers to answer the non-emergency phone line, although the 9-1-1 line gets answered right away, he said.
“It’s an experience, but it’s not a positive experience,” Salinas said. “We are trying to get it back.”
The combined dispatch center could be more successful if police and fire chiefs collaborate on issues and training rather than fighting over politics, he said.
In Wichita Falls, where the dispatch center has been combined for more than 20 years, the system’s kinks have been worked out and the dispatch process is generally cohesive, Battalian Chief Steve Paulson said.
And in Wichita Falls, firefighters work dispatch as part-time jobs on their off hours, doing so for dispatch wages, said Paulson, a fire department employee for about 30 years whose career preceded the dispatch center consolidation.
“I don’t know if it’s ever going to be as good as having your own employees, but it has improved it a lot,” he said.
Training is key for a good civilian-run dispatch center, he added.
“The training is so important in something like that,” Paulson said. “As a firemen, I would love for it to be strictly firemen, but we don’t always get what we want.”
Dispatcher training
The Beaumont dispatchers will receive the standard training the National Academies of Emergency Dispatch mandates, said Bart Bartkowiak, the city’s chief technology officer and designated overseer of the combined dispatch center.
Training levels are under review, Bartkowiak said.
“After we hire the new director, we will be working toward defining the exact job descriptions and training regimen that we will follow in the new 9-1-1 combined dispatch center,” Bartkowiak wrote in an e-mail to The Enterprise.
He said he already has determined that 90 percent of the fire department’s calls are medical in nature.
“I think it’s important to get some people who have real-world experience as paramedics and EMT in the center,” he said. “That’s where we really need to concentrate on getting some experience in.”
Many cities combine the police, fire and EMS calls when they build a new dispatch center or undergo renovations, which is the case in Beaumont, said Eisner.
Beaumont’s project will include a radio dispatch area and employee break and lounge area, as well as meeting and training rooms, according to the city’s capital program.
Key says he’s not opposed to combining the center. He just wants the firefighters to continue taking calls because he is convinced the city won’t properly train civilians regarding the fire department’s equipment and procedures.
“Part of our job is being able to be at an emergency scene in less than 4 minutes,” he said. “When somebody’s mother is lying on the floor with a heart attack (and) not breathing, it’s pretty important that we are there in less than 4 minutes.”
And for Hayes, properly training the civilians is part of the territory when combining the centers and he says he is trying to make fiscally sound decisions for the taxpayers.
“It’s another productivity issue,” he said. “We are paying firefighters to answer calls, and we need those firefighters working in suppression on fire trucks. Every productivity issue that we try to work on and achieve, the union puts up roadblocks.”