Let’s hope this is the end. No, not the end of the innocence or even of the world as we know it. Let’s hope Monday’s announcement from Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk that she had selected a new director of the 911 Center signals the end of the almost yearlong debate regarding its efficacy and the safety of the Madison area.
By now everyone knows the storyline: Brittany Zimmermann and the dropped call from her phone last April. The subsequent public outcries led to the resignation of former Director Joe Norwick in September, speculation about larger problems within the center, massive spending to update technology and an external audit. Finally, when it seemed nothing more could go wrong, a man found was dead 90 minutes after a non-emergency call was placed in November. The 911 Center’s ship has been pretty close to sinking for the last four months.
Well at least now it has a new captain. Falk presented John Dejung as her pick for new director of the 911 Center last Thursday.
A UW graduate, Dejung comes highly acclaimed. He directed Minneapolis’ 911/311 program over the last 12 years including in 2007, when it won the 911 Call Center of the Year Award for its handling of the I-35 bridge collapse. Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said Dejung is a tremendous choice and even Nancy Mistele, Falk’s challenger in the upcoming April 7 election, admitted he was more qualified than the previous director, which would be like George Steinbrenner admitting Curt Schilling is a pretty qualified pitcher.
It seems that all quarters have high expectations of this new director — and there isn’t really any reason they shouldn’t. But the important thing is that we all recognize the 911 Center is no Augean Stable. It doesn’t seem like it was full of shit before this whole affair took place, and it won’t require some Herculean effort to repair its operations and its image. The biggest danger with this appointment is the expectation that will be placed on the incoming director.
The audit failed to reveal any glaring problems, and save for the comments of a few 911 dispatchers and one candidate for county executive, it appears everything is in order. To be sure, there was something fishy going on in the months after the Zimmermann murder, but in retrospect, that seems to be more clumsy political posturing than genuine dysfunction.
So in the end, Dejung’s biggest problem may not be reforming a busted system or getting approved by the county board, but rather justifying the manpower and money he never asked for being spent on a 911 Center that may never have been truly broken.
Joe Labuz ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in biomedical engineering.
