Photo by Jennifer Hauck/Valley News
[B]URLINGTON — Unions representing Burlington firefighters and police officers are split over a ballot item that would regionalize Chittenden County dispatchers.
Voters in seven Chittenden County communities — Burlington, Colchester, Milton, Shelburne, South Burlington, Williston and Winooski — will be asked tomorrow if they want to move forward with a plan that would move all the emergency dispatchers in their towns into a single, consolidated center.
Proponents say a centralized system would speed up emergency response times, and provide better coordination between dispatchers, but dispatchers themselves are almost universally opposed to the plan. They say that taking dispatchers out of the towns that they know intimately will lead to a dangerous lack of knowledge.
The Burlington firefighters union supports the regional plan, and says that it will eventually lead to faster response times, and better coordination between towns that often share emergency resources.
“We feel like having a regional situation in a communications center would just make that easier for everyone,” said Sean Ploof, a BFD Lieutenant and president of the firefighter’s union.
Ploof said that the union’s executive team met late last week to decide their position on the plan, and eventually gave their unanimous support. Some firefighters question the plan, Ploof said, but many of them are in support.
Only three of the seven communities need to approve the plan for it to move forward, and for much of the operational details to be worked out, according to officials. It would take at least a year from the vote Tuesday to have a regional center established, and communities could join later if they don’t approve the plan.
Over the weekend, the Burlington police union came out on the opposite side of the regional dispatch plan, saying in a news release that without an operational plan, it’s unfair to ask voters to approve the idea.
“To ask voters to vote on this with no definitive operational plans in place is not fair,” wrote Richard Weinisch, a Burlington police detective and vice president of the police union.
Burlington police are generally more reliant on their local dispatchers because compared to firefighters, they handle far more calls and share fewer resources with neighboring communities. They also echo dispatchers’ concerns, saying that the detailed local knowledge is key to the patrol officer.
“They know exactly what we’re looking for,” Weinisch said. “When someone’s describing a back alley or something, they’re all so familiar with the geography. And I think that’s the piece that we as the union were afraid we were going to lose.”
Weinisch said the union never held an official vote to decide the position, but it was clear the union had a consensus.
“I don’t know of one member who is in support of this,” Weinisch said. “It’s just vague, they can’t answer any of our questions.”
The firefighter’s decision to support a regional system should be seen as a way to make a better system, not as a knock on local dispatchers, Ploof said.
“For us this isn’t about people, it’s about systems. And it’s about continuing the conversation,” Ploof said.
Those on both sides of the debate praised Burlington’s dispatchers.
“These are some of the most professional people you’re going to ever encounter. They deal with situations that normal people never have to deal with,” Ploof said.
The plan represents a major change in the way emergency services are organized and disseminated in Chittenden County. When someone calls 911, the call is picked up at a Public Service Answering Point. If a call is made in Chittenden County, for example, it’s most likely answered at the state police barracks in Williston.
That person collects information and then makes a call to a dispatcher where the emergency is taking place — if the emergency is in Burlington, a dispatcher working in the Burlington Police Department will take the call and organize the emergency response.
But with a consolidated center, the initial Chittenden County 911 call would be taken not by the Williston center, but by the regional center, where dispatchers would take the call and coordinate the emergency response without making a second call to a dedicated dispatcher in one of the seven towns where the emergency is happening.
Officials and dispatchers have been haggling over how much time will be saved with not having to make that second call.
Steven Locke, the Burlington Fire Chief said that up to 71 seconds could be saved, based on a 2016 survey of 911 calls, but Kathryn Clarke, a Burlington dispatcher who has served as the de facto spokesperson of the dispatchers, said time savings could be as little as 10 seconds, if that.
Burlington voters will see this question as Question 2 on the ballot.
FORMATION OF A UNION MUNICIPAL DISTRICT TO PROVIDE REGIONAL EMERGENCY DISPATCH
“Shall the City of Burlington enter into an agreement for the formation of a union municipal district to be known as the Chittenden County Public Safety Authority for the purpose of providing regional emergency dispatch?”
