[media-credit name=’LUKAS KEAPPROTH/Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]

The chair of the Dane County Board of Supervisors will propose a budget increase to hire three additional dispatchers to the county’s 911 center after an external audit revealed the center is understaffed and dispatchers are overworked.

Chair Scott McDonell, District 1, said Thursday he will have a budget amendment for the county’s finance committee next week requesting three new positions on top of County Executive Kathleen Falk’s earlier request to add six new positions in her 2009 budget.

That change would increase the center’s staff from 60 to 69 by mid-2009 and could cost the county about $125,000.

The increase proposal is based on an external audit developed by Matrix Consulting Group in Andover, Mass. The Board of Supervisors requested the audit after an investigation revealed a dispatcher mishandled a call from University of Wisconsin junior Brittany Zimmermann’s cell phone the day she was killed in April.

On Monday, two noise complaint phone calls were received by the center but police were not sent to the scene until almost two hours later, when a third call came in reporting a dead body at Lake Edge Park.

On both cases, Madison police said the content of the calls indicated law enforcement officials should have been dispatched, but the 911 Center failed to do so.

Travis Miller, vice president of Matrix Consulting Group, said no center is perfect and that Dane County’s is a “generally well-run center.” Yet he added the additional positions would avoid low staffing numbers and employee turnover due to overtime hours in Dane County.

The company also looked at current space usage and is making recommendations to make operations more efficient at the center.

“What’s nice is that because the equipment and computers have gotten so much more efficient and smaller, the sheer physical space is diminished,” Miller said.

McDonell said he is confident the audit is heading in a positive direction, and that once the additional staff is hired, overtime hours at the 911 Center should be reduced to a minimum.

“This is just a fairly small piece of the audit, and a lot of the things will require more change coming December or January,” McDonell said after Thursday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. “But so far, I have been pretty impressed.”

Matrix Consulting Group moves on to the second phase of the audit, in which the company will analyze management and general operations at the 911 Center. That part of the audit should be ready by January 2009.

The 911 Center continues to seek a full-time director after Joe Norwick resigned amid intense scrutiny following the mishandled call from Zimmermann’s cell phone. McDonell said county officials are still seeking a qualified candidate from a nationwide poll, and he hopes the process will be completed by the end of this year.

“If we need to pay more to have someone on staff we will,” he said. “We need someone who can make the kind of changes that we need.”