Maine news, sports, weather from Waterville Morning Sentinel

CHIEF WANTS DISPATCH BACK

BY AMY CALDER Staff Writer

WATERVILLE -- Taking away the city's right to dispatch 911 calls has increased costs, decreased service and reduced safety for both police officers and the community, police Chief Joseph Massey says.

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Joseph P. Massey.

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He wants that to change.

"The best solution for Waterville at this time, considering the current configuration, is to have back our 911 services," Massey said Thursday. "We'd be more proficient in delivering 911 services to the community."

Massey said he has spent many hours attending meetings in Augusta and working to stay abreast of a proposal to further reduce the number of Public Safety Answering Points, which take and dispatch 911 calls.

In 2006, there were 48 such centers, including Waterville's, and that number was reduced to 23. A current proposal would decrease them from 23 to 15 or 17.

Until 2006, Waterville Communications Center in the Police Department took 911 calls and dispatched rescue, ambulances, fire and police directly.

When the state took away that authority in 2006, Waterville chose to have its 911 calls answered by Somerset County Communications Center in Skowhegan, which was less expensive than Central Maine Regional Communications Center in Augusta, Massey said. The center in Augusta is operated by the state Department of Public Safety.

Waterville still dispatches non-911 calls for the city, area towns and Delta Ambulance. Calls from the Waterville area to 911 go to Somerset County and then return to Waterville.

Eliminating Waterville's ability to dispatch 911 calls was not good for the city, Massey contends.

Prior to the 2006 change, Waterville dispatched for Waterville, Winslow and Delta Ambulance. Since then, Waterville has continued to dispatch non-911 calls for Winslow, Oakland and Delta, which produces about $80,000 annually in revenues for the city.

Waterville also provided dispatching fire and rescue services for the towns of Rome, Albion, Sidney, Belgrade and China. Waterville also dispatches for Clinton police. Revenues for those towns total about $46,000 yearly.

Waterville pays Somerset County $15,600 a year for 911 dispatching. Waterville has one more dispatcher than it had prior to the change.

Massey thinks the recommendation to further reduce and consolidate dispatch and 911 services will not resolve the problems Waterville has had and continues to experience.

He said 911 calls placed from cell phones go directly to the Augusta center, because Somerset does not have the technology to take 911 calls from cell phones. Waterville also does not have such capability.

"So, we have experienced dropped calls and have tried to work with CMRCC (in Augusta) to minimize that from occurring," he said.

Having another agency take 911 calls and then transfer them to Waterville adds another step to the process, delaying help for the caller, he said. When someone in Waterville calls 911, Somerset dispatchers must take the call, transfer it to Waterville and stay on the line until all the information is transferred in case the caller hangs up during the call, he said.

He said Waterville police have a good relationship with Somerset officials and they meet regularly, but that problems are inherent in a system in which calls do not go directly to a local dispatcher.

"It is working as well as it possibly can," he said of the arrangement with Somerset.

Meanwhile, the state on Feb. 19 released results of an investigation into Maine's Public Safety Answering Points that was launched following allegations of poor emergency response involving two fatalities in 2008.

The Office of Program Evaluation and Government Accountability (OPEGA) found that 911 calls are not handled consistently; that PSAPs are "blindly" transferring calls to dispatch centers; that the call center in Augusta needs more active supervision; and that fee structures between state, county and municipal communications centers are significantly different, leading to discrepancies in service.

Massey says the problems he attributes to the reduction in 911 call centers are problems that Waterville officials predicted prior to the change.

Police chiefs were asked to complete a survey last fall for the OPEGA report, but the questions were not comprehensive, Massey said. He says that his and other chiefs' responses to the report were not listed in the report.

"I am very willing to participate in consolidation efforts as long as it appears they meet the law enforcement needs of the city," he said.

The OPEGA report recommends moving non-911 dispatch and 911 dispatch services back under one roof, which reverses the original plan to break them up, Massey says.

"I am concerned what that recommendation means for the Waterville dispatch center," he said.

Anne Jordan, commissioner of the state Department of Public Safety, doubts that would mean giving Waterville back its 911 dispatching authority.

"That's going to be a legislative decision, but I don't see that happening," Jordan said.

She said the decision to reduce PSAPs was made by the state Legislature in 2003 and there is no pending legislation that would return 911 dispatch services to Waterville.

Jordan, who became commissioner in 2007, notes that the Public Utilities Commission decides who gets the 911 call centers and that the commission did not choose Waterville.

The issue is complicated, particularly with more households dropping telephone land lines and using only cell phones, Jordan said. As that occurs, technology must change to track those calls.

State law mandates that a majority of 911 cell phone calls go to one of four PSAPs in the state. Major infrastructure changes would have to be made through the utility commission to enable other dispatch centers to transfer 911 cell-phone calls, she said.

When someone calls 911 from a land line, the address, name and other information immediately shows on a dispatcher's screen. But when someone calls from a cell phone, a dispatcher knows only the general area from which the call is generated.

"I think the key focus here is the safety of Maine people, and the system is extremely complicated and the technology is extremely complicated," she said.

Amy Calder -- 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com