Safety officials discuss proposed dispatch center

Wasilla's ambitious proposal for a new regional public safety dispatch center will be refined in meetings over the next couple of years. This early in the program, even Wasilla's communications coordinator Charlie Fannon can't describe exactly which agencies will join Wasilla, what they'll want from the dispatch center or how much the center will cost to run.

But even if they don't know how the program will shake out, Fannon and other public safety officials all say technology upgrades ought to be explored. The dispatch center's design should involve more than simply moving from Palmer to Wasilla and working to gather more partners, officials say.

Palmer Police Chief Russ Boatright said he was cautious about bringing too many agencies under one roof. He maintains that the Palmer dispatch is adequate, but that technology upgrades are needed.

"Do we need new equipment? Yes. Need it yesterday? No," Boatright said.

Boatright said the life cycle for dispatch equipment is typically five to six years. He hadn't yet begun to list the Palmer police department's needs for the next generation of dispatch.

Boatright also acknowledged an opportunity for his department to benefit from the $1.6-million grant Wasilla expects to receive if public safety officials come up with the right design.

"The technology has to be available at central dispatch before we can put it in the field," Boatright said.

Kevin Koechlein, the Mat-Su Borough's director of public safety, said the dispatch plans involve more than a new radio system.

"Radio is a very small component of a dispatch center," Koechlein said. Koechlein also said radio coverage had been recently upgraded throughout the borough with a new repeater system.

Koechlein said fire and ambulance service could benefit from better data handling a new dispatch center could provide. A single fire or accident call generates several reports, Koechlein said. While the Palmer dispatch does keep logs of the individual calls, the logs aren't on a shared computer network, which makes compiling each report slower.

"Right now the same piece of data will be entered five or six times by several different agencies," Koechlein said. "For that one call, there's going to be a fire report, a rescue report, and a medical report for every patient that we touched, and the troopers are going to have a report."

Koechlein said compiling those reports from scratch takes extra time from dispatchers as well because public safety workers often must call the dispatch for information for reports.

Fannon said instant access to data is also valuable for police departments. In some jurisdictions, officers equipped with computers and wireless access to data can get information on a person, a vehicle, or an address without waiting for a dispatcher to respond to their request. And by freeing up dispatcher time, the system could serve a growing population without a steep increase in operating costs.

"It doesn't have to require more people," Fannon said, "It may even take away some work from the dispatchers."

Fannon also looks forward to global positioning system (GPS)-equipped vehicles that send their location data to dispatch and possibly GPS that tracks individual officers while they are on foot. Police cars can also be equipped with a display similar to the dispatcher's display so officers will be able to check their partner's location.

"Our system is old and we can't just add on some of things we'd like to add on," Fannon said ". . . The only reason our system works as it does, is because we have a group of excellent dispatchers working over there in Palmer."