'Part of my family'

As the Chittenden County Public Safety Authority thrusts ahead on its nearly $2.3 million effort to regionalize emergency dispatch, the voices on the other end of the phone worry how consolidation will distort their jobs.

“You lose that institutional knowledge when you take someone out of their community and put them into a new environment,” said Deb Kruger, who has dispatched in South Burlington for 40 years.

She dispatched for her father, a retired South Burlington firefighter, and for her late husband, a police lieutenant who she met over the phone.

“I refer to the cops as my cops, as my firefighters, because that’s how I feel; they’re part of my family,” said Kruger.

She’s heard this song before: In the 1990s officials took steps to consolidate the strained infrastructure, eventually petering out, but she does not think regionalization is the best option for revitalizing dispatch, nor will it provide relief to overburdened dispatchers.

South Burlington city manager Kevin Dorn, who heads the public safety authority, sees the regionalization as a much-needed efficiency booster, adding a safety net of mutual aid and updated technology to streamline the process.

The revamp efforts, which began in 2018, plan to cover five communities via one dispatch center, housed in a space above the South Burlington Police Department, Dorn said. By cutting some extra steps currently in place, and with updated technology, he thinks the efficiencies will dramatically reduce response times and increase use of emergency apparatus.

“Time is a valuable asset in an emergency,” said South Burlington fire chief Terry Francis. Long before joining the South Burlington fire department, he worked as a young dispatcher in Burlington and remembers the stress of being alone in a booth answering calls.

On Feb. 1, when an 18-year-old fired gun shots in University Mall, one dispatcher was coordinating South Burlington police, fire and rescue and at least six other agencies, on top of emergency and nonemergency phone calls, Francis said.

“There were well over 100 phone calls, people saying, ‘I’m in a closet at Spencer’s because I heard gun shots,’” he said. The dispatcher did a great job, but she was overtasked, he added. “That’s a tough job. You’re juggling a lot of plates when it’s busy. If it’s chaotic enough, it’s easy to have a plate drop.”

After forty years dispatching in South Burlington, Kruger knows the balancing act better than most. Some calls still haunt her, leaving her wondering what might’ve happened if she’d done something different.

But other shifts, like when she dispatched for the ice storm of 1997 — alone in the booth — or when she’s been able to help older residents through Project Good Morning, are what keep her going.

Since she began dispatching in the 1980s, Kruger said demand and call volume has grown but the way dispatch is structured has largely remained rigid. Currently, full-time dispatchers each work a 10-hour shift, one person answering phones at a time, with a few hours of overlap in the morning and at night.

“They’ve added and added and added to call volume but not necessarily added to staff,” Kruger said. She thinks hiring more dispatchers and more people to cover 9-1-1 centers would be a much simpler solution than regionalization.

Kruger also worries that community connection and knowledge, which can save valuable time in an emergency, might be lost if dispatchers are working for multiple unfamiliar communities.

“We get to know our police, firefighters and EMS very well. Even from the intonation of a voice on a radio when they call in, we know if they’re under stress,” she said. “If you’re working with different officers all the time, you’ll lose that.”

South Burlington police chief Shawn Burke agreed that the regionalization efforts have “led to a degree of uncertainty” within the dispatch team. But since the authority made clear all current dispatchers will have a position in the new center, if they want it, Burke said apprehension has calmed somewhat.

“The synergy between police officers and dispatchers is great and I think that the thought of all of us being regionalized troubles them in that sense,” said Burke. Still, the growth of fire and EMS demand in South Burlington alone has overwhelmed what’s designed to be a police dispatch center, he said.

While the idea has been ruminating for decades, many dispatchers felt they’d been left in the dark on the current county-wide regionalization efforts, added Burke.

“Culturally it is a big change,” he said, but “we haven’t really made the requisite personnel investments to keep up” with demand.

Should renovation above the South Burlington police department move forward, Burke said the consolidated dispatch center would be “terrific to have here as a tenant.”

At a meeting last month, the public safety authority discussed plans to break ground on the new dispatch space this summer, after Burlington — which will sponsor a large chunk of funding — ratifies its city budget in June. But the authority cannot take concrete renovation steps until all funding is in place.

“Funding is still the key issue,” said Dorn. The total capital cost for regionalizing dispatch clocks in at around $2.2 to $2.3 million. Not a small chunk of change.

While the participating communities have already committed to a slice of funding each, Dorn hopes that additional grant money and COVID-19 relief will ease the pressure on municipal pockets.

Francis admitted the current efforts are an expensive solution to “a big question,” but he believes the long-needed effort will improve public safety service to communities, reduce delays and provide some relief to dispatchers.

“A lot of people don’t appreciate how hard of a job it is,” said Francis. “Ultimately, it’s about serving the public and making sure we’re getting resources to the community. If COVID moneys are available for that — improving public safety after a pandemic? I can’t think of a better way to spend it.”