[B]URLINGTON — City voters will get to weigh in on whether Burlington and other Chittenden County municipalities should create a regional emergency dispatch center. Residents also will be asked whether the city should encourage lawmakers to raise the minimum age to buy and smoke tobacco.
The City Council approved the Town Meeting Day ballot items during its meeting Monday night. The plan to combine all Chittenden County dispatch centers into a single central office was first discussed in the 1960s, according to several letters of support for the center.
The center — which would handle all 911 calls for Burlington, Colchester, Essex, Milton, Shelburne, South Burlington, Williston and Winooski — has support from the chiefs of many Chittenden County fire and police departments.
They say a regional center would reduce the time it takes for a 911 operator to contact local emergency services, make it easier for departments to work together, and allow more on-duty dispatchers and better career opportunities for dispatchers.
“I tell my loved ones not to call 911. I tell them to call dispatch,” said Burlington Police Chief Brandon del Pozo.
The new center would work similarly to a city-model dispatch system, as del Pozo referred to it, where a 911 call taker would immediately start entering details of an emergency into a computer that a dispatcher — the person who works with emergency services — can see right away.
In the current model, a 911 call is received by one of six public service answering points in Vermont, then details of the emergency are repeated to a dispatcher, usually while the caller is still on the line, del Pozo said.
“That cuts out 30, 40, 50, 60 seconds,” del Pozo said.
The plan has already been approved by Attorney General TJ Donovan. It would operate under a similar governance structure as other regional districts such as the Champlain Water District and the Chittenden Solid Waste District. These are referred to as union municipal districts.
Kathryn Clarke said she has been a Burlington police and fire dispatcher for six years. A new dispatch system likely would not cut response time by much, she said. She also said dispatchers are worried they may have to reapply for their jobs should they move to a central dispatch center.
Clarke said moving dispatchers out of the communities they work in could lead to a dangerous knowledge gap.
“We will lose intimate knowledge of the city. There will be people who do not know the landmarks, and they do not know the people, and that could translate to a loss of service to the people who need it,” she said.
Councilors voted 11-1 to put the item on the March ballot, with Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, being the sole no vote.
Should Vermont raise the legal tobacco age?
Voter approval of the nonbinding question about raising the tobacco age likely would put pressure on state lawmakers, especially those who voted down a bill this year that sought to bump it to 21. The age for legally buying tobacco is now 18.
That measure died in the Vermont Senate on a 16-13 vote. Sens. Tim Ashe, D/P-Chittenden, who is the Senate president, and Chris Pearson, P/D-Chittenden, both voted against it.
“This will have a real, hopefully potential impact on how they view this in 2018,” said Councilor Chip Mason, D-Ward 5.
“Tobacco is the No. 1 preventable cause of illness in the United States, and mortality,” said Dr. Prospero Gogo, a cardiologist at the University of Vermont Medical Center. Gogo added that the majority of people with heart attacks at the hospital are smokers.
Many who oppose raising the age argue that 18-year-olds, who can head off to war, should be able to decide what to put in their bodies. Gogo gave several examples where that may not be the case, including the legal drinking age and the threshold for serving in Congress.
Some councilors remained unconvinced.
“I feel that we talk out of both sides of our mouth,” said Sharon Bushor, I-Ward 1.
“This person, who can go off to war and fight for us at the age of 18, but now we say they can’t make that determination of whether or not they can have access to tobacco products,” Bushor said.
The council approved the measure 9-3, with Bushor, Tracy and Dave Hartnett, I-North District, opposing it.
