A Dane County committee passed Tuesday the first of a few recommendations to improve operations at the county’s 911 Center.

The ordinances, passed by Dane County Board of Supervisors’ Public Protection and Judiciary Committee, include the addition of a computer-aided dispatch analyst, the implementation of phone-related audio recommendations and amendment of the 2009 capital budget for the remodeling of the center’s headquarters.

The audio recommendations were included in efforts to decrease the volume of calls the center manages by setting up a prerecorded message assuring the caller they reached 911 and should not hang up because an emergency dispatcher will answer shortly.

Because 911 Center protocols rule that dispatchers must return hang-up phone calls, staff could quickly become overwhelmed if they have to answer calls and return the ones that went unanswered due to busy lines.

“The nuance is, if you do the assurance after the ring, you also need to think about the people who don’t speak English (and) people with disabilities,” said Karin Peterson Thurlow, a representative from the 911 Center who spoke at the Tuesday meeting. “We need to think how it would appropriately affect us.”

The improvements come from an external audit developed by Matrix Consulting Group, an Andover, Mass.-based company. The audit was prompted after two calls went unreturned last year, one of which was made from the cell phone of University of Wisconsin junior Brittany Zimmermann, who was killed in her West Doty Street apartment last April.

The two audio-related changes were ranked in the medium-priority category by Matrix, which recommended the implementation to be completed in 60 to 90 days from the date the audit was released earlier this month.

The Center’s remodeling would cost the county about $1.4 million to overhaul the facility, from security of the center to new uninterrupted power source systems.

“We need to make our center operational for the next 20 years,” said Kathy Krusiec, 911 Center interim director.

The ordinances now head to the County Board’s Personnel and Finance Committee and could be brought to a vote by the full board in the coming two weeks, according to County Board Chair Scott McDonnell, District 1.