Wasilla spends $5 million on new dispatch setup

WASILLA — The city of Wasilla has dished up $5 million to upgrade their dispatch system technology and communication.

Dispatch was previously located in a small room in the Wasilla Police Department building but has been moved across the hall to a larger room.

The emergency responder system answers about 24,000 calls a month or 800 times a day and takes police, trooper, EMS, fire and informational related calls. Many calls come from outside Wasilla in the Houston, Chickaloon and Mat-Su area, which makes Wasilla Dispatch one of the largest in the state, just behind Anchorage.

The new dispatch room has two call takers and three actual dispatchers, each covering either Alaska State Trooper, Mat-Su Borough or Wasilla calls.

As the number of emergency calls increase, so does the demand for good dispatchers.

“It goes up every year because of population growth,” said Wasilla Mayor Bert Cottle.

But most people are not cut out for keeping a job so high in stress.

“They seem to stick around until you get some kind of real bad call and a bad call kind of wipes out some people,” said Wasilla Police Chief Gene Belden.

As a result of high turnover rate due to the stressful nature of the job, Wasilla Dispatch is down to 24 filled positions even though they are authorized for 29. Shifts last 12 hours, but what makes them difficult is that each dispatcher must listen to an emergency play out over the phone in real time and may ultimately never know the end result. The job is to sit there, listen, record and try to bring in more backup, according to Belden.

“It’s just the nature of the beast. You gotta love the job,” said Lt. Chris Watchus.

Despite the need for new dispatch employees, getting the job is no easy feat. Candidates must first pass a board of supervisors who grade them on their application.

Then they go through what the WPD calls ‘critical testing’ on the computer, which is a simulated dispatch environment that becomes consistently more difficult and requires an increase of multitasking skills as time goes on. Prospective employees are required to pass critical testing with an 80 percent success rate or higher. Then the potential hires must pass an oral board test with a 70 percent or higher. Lastly, only the top three applicants go through medical testing and ultimately might get a job offer.

But training takes six months.

Many dispatchers end up losing their jobs or never getting them in the first place due to negative drug tests.

“It takes a special person to be a dispatcher,” Watchus said.

Wasilla Dispatch is not the only ones having hiring problems. WPD currently has two police officer positions open, and his last two hires were out-of-state officers who wanted to experience Alaska. Beldon attributes his difficulty finding officers to a lack of interest in the profession, positive drug backgrounds and an absence of proper education.

“We can’t take you if you can’t add, subtract and multiply,” he said.

When WPD moves to their new 11-acre location on Wasilla-Fishhook Road next year, dispatch will eventually take up the entire second floor of the old police building.