Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Consolidated dispatch makes debut

Emergency 911 communications now under one roof

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By JASON KAUFFMAN
Express Staff Writer

Barb Williams, front, and Dodie Chapman monitor the county?s newly consolidated emergency 911 dispatch center in Hailey, which now employs dispatchers formerly from Ketchum and Blaine County. ?Both the Ketchum and county dispatchers are learning from each other,? Chapman said Monday. Photo by Willy Cook

So far, so good.

That was the initial report from Blaine County Administrator Mike McNees on Monday, just two days after the county and city of Ketchum pooled their emergency dispatchers into one group working out of the Blaine County Sheriff's Office in Hailey. The result of the merger is a consolidated emergency 911 dispatch center, a feat that has eluded a succession of valley leaders for years.

Early Saturday, that vision became reality.

"Everything has gone smoothly so far," McNees said.

Earlier this month, McNees and Bob Greenlaw, director of Blaine County emergency communications, announced to the County Commission that the Ketchum City Council had approved a portion of the funding to make consolidated dispatch in Blaine County a reality.

Following a half-hour discussion in open meeting and then in executive session in early December, the Ketchum City Council agreed to put $304,000 in the county's coffers for consolidated dispatch. That amount will fund the transfer of Ketchum employees to the county for the rest of the fiscal year and will include salaries, benefits and training expenses.

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Ketchum's six employees and the county's nine employees will be combined into a staff of 15.

The dispatch center will be located at the current Blaine County Sheriff's Office until a new public safety facility is completed on Airport Way in Hailey sometime later next year. Consolidation of dispatch centers is another step in the ongoing process of putting a new jail, sheriff's office and dispatch center under one roof.