In an effort to improve an “unusual governance structure” for Dane County’s 911 Call Center, County Executive Joe Parisi is calling for a revamping of the current system.
Melanie Conklin, communications director for Parisi, said the proposal to change the 911 center comes from Parisi and Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney, as well as County Board Chair Sharon Corrigan and Paul Rusk, chair of the county’s public protection and judiciary committee.
Rusk said the problem with the current system is that it is unorganized, and any changes that need to be made have to move through five different committees. Requests for changes to the 911 center often get pushed back to later meetings because of lack of time, he said.
“The basic problem is there’s too many cooks in the kitchen, and it takes too long to make changes,” Rusk said. “With public safety, you need to act promptly.”
Parisi’s proposal calls for the merging of two of the technical committees involved and having that new technical advisory committee report to the 911 center director, the county board and Parisi himself.
Conklin said that is the way it is done in the rest of Wisconsin and most of the United States, making Dane County’s current “cumbersome” system an odd exception.
Dane County’s system relies on a largely diverse group of different kinds of fire and police department structures, Rusk said. Some cities, like Madison, have professionally-trained firefighters, while other smaller towns and villages rely on volunteer firefighters with pagers, Rusk said. He said the dispatch center works with a huge number of different cities around the county, unlike most other 911 centers.
“I don’t think there’s any system in the United States that dispatches for as many different places,” Rusk said. “It’s a very challenging job for the people working at the 911 center.”
The unorganized 911 center is not the only complication the county has seen recently, Rusk said. Parisi called for a pre-alert system that was designed to improve the response time for serious emergencies, and that bounced between many different committees before finally getting done.
In addition, Rusk said a new radio system called DaneCom, which is meant to better connect emergency responders with public departments, has seen its share of stalling. He said a committee of 22 people was created to design the project, but the strength of the radio signals they chose was too weak, making DaneCom less effective than needed.
To fix this, Rusk said the county now needs to build more towers throughout the county to strengthen the signals so they have less trouble passing through thick brick walls and other barriers that would hinder the first responders.
Rusk said this was another example of too many people making the project more complicated than it needs to be.
“You’re trying to appease everybody and you don’t get it right … The system isn’t working so great, we need to look at a different way,” Rusk said.
Rusk said the timing of the proposal is good, as the county budget and components like DaneCom will be talking points for the next few weeks.
The county will have a public hearing Tuesday to address the details of Parisi’s proposal.
“We can do nothing, leave it the way it is or we can make changes to the proposal,” Rusk said. “We’ll listen to everybody.”
