Commissioners Get 911 Central Dispatch Center Update

By DIANNE ALWARD-BIERY

Cleaver Staff Writer

HARRISON – The March 20 meeting of the Clare County Board of Commissioners was a meeting of presentations. In addition to the Veterans Services presentation also reported in this issue, the Board heard from Marlana Terrian, director of Clare County Central Dispatch 9-1-1 Emergency Services.

Terrian packed her presentation with a multitude of details – apropos, as the very nature of emergency services dispatch is getting all the necessary details and directing that information to the appropriate responding agency. She spoke of her department’s current budget of $1,595,311.23 as well as the various revenue streams contributing to it. That includes the current tax levy of 0.350 of one mill to be collected through December 2024 [estimated at $450,000], the purpose of which is to fund Central Dispatch, including equipment and operational needs. She said a millage renewal will be sought on the August ballot.

Funding is also gathered through local and state surcharge fees. The local operational surcharge is $1.75 per device/per month, but statute allows voter approval to increase local surcharge rates up to $3. Terrian said the last increase was approved in August 2020, but took effect July 1, 2021. The state technical surcharge is a 6% fee applied to all prepaid minutes and phone cards at the time of purchase, and 25 cents per month for devices that are part of a service plan. Of that, 35% of the state surcharge fund is used for training fund distribution and maintaining the 91 call delivery network. The remaining 65% is distributed among qualifying counties with 9-1-1 plans.

Terrian’s breakdown of expenses included 7% recurring; 28% projects and purchases; 63% personnel wages and benefits; and 2% for other expenses.

Staffing is essential to what Central Dispatch does, and Terrian noted that full staffing is comprised of 11 employees: one director, two supervisors and eight full-time dispatchers who provide work all day and night, year-round. Terrian said the minimum staffing level is two dispatchers on duty, and that there are currently 10 fully trained employees, with one new employee to start training soon.

Terrian explained that it takes four to six months to train a new dispatcher before they may fill a shift, and that only 50% of new hires complete their training successfully. In her department, one dispatcher will be retiring this May [after 21 years] which means a second dispatcher will be in training.

When she spoke of the duties and responsibilities, Terrian said that things which would be expected include the taking of 9-1-1 and non-emergency calls – which she broke down as 15,624 9-1-1 calls; 25,886 non-emergency calls; and texts sent to 9-1-1. [Terrian said Central Dispatch can take text messages, but there is not the capability to receive photos sent to 9-1-1.] It also includes dispatching of three law enforcement agencies, five fire departments, three FR agencies and other responders, including ACO, DNR Fire and Law and support for MMR crews. And when those agencies are dispatched, her department continues monitoring all active incidents and the status of responders. That can include checking CAD history and performing Law Enforcement information Network inquiries, and the logging of 35,623 incidents in 2023.

Other duties executed by Central Dispatch include: Entry, modification, cancellation of court orders to/from LEIN, such as warrants, bond conditions, probation orders, personal protection orders, and more. Also handled are criminal history requests for law enforcement, the prosecutor’s office and district court probation. Also included are requests for tow companies, utility companies, road commission, MDOT, DPW, railroad maintenance and more.

Terrian also noted there are challenges facing 9-1-1 which include recruitment, training and retention of staffing; the current county network and infrastructure’s stability; outages of phones, cell towers, fiber connections; keeping abreast of new technology; uncooperative callers; and the increased need of communities for help while having less resources available.

Terrian cited two upcoming projects. The first in FY 24 calls for replacing the radio consoles used by dispatchers and adding two radio consoles at the backup dispatch site at the Clare Police Department, as well as completion of an address point GIS layer for mapping system use.

In FY 25, hardware and software upgrades for the dispatch phone system are planned, as well as increasing the CAD software capabilities by cleaning up databases and purchasing add-on features such as adding mapping to the software which would enable sharing it with responders.

Sheriff John Wilson, who accompanied Terrian, said that capability is available through the software, but that it all comes down to money.

“It’s $27,000 to add on to it,” he said. “So, that’s something we’re looking at in the future. And by using the layers we can build into that mapping program.”

Terrian said she asked some of her dispatchers what they wanted the public to know about what they do. The one she chose to share was “How quickly the atmosphere of the room can change…and they must adapt to it!”

“For some of you who have been in the Dispatch Center, it can seem like wow, you don’t really have much going on in here, which is normally the case,” she said. “Then [finger snap] like that, one phone call can basically create chaos in our world. Of course, we don’t feel like it’s chaos because we know what we’re doing, but to an outsider sitting in the room…they’re like wow, there’s a lot going on, how do you keep up with all the different things you’re trying to do at one time?”

Terrian invited the commissioners to visit the Dispatch Center to see firsthand how things are done, and to pick the brains of dispatchers.

At that point, Administrator Lori Phelps informed that 9-1-1 had received a perfect program review. Terrian elaborated, noting her department had gone through a compliance review last year which was done by the State 9-1-1 Committee.

“They send a committee to our dispatch center, talk to our staff, our partners in emergency services,” she said. “They also look over all of our expenditures ... look to see that we’re doing everything with the best practices guidelines. And they said we were being fiscally responsible and were in compliance, as far as they were concerned, with all of the things they were looking at. That was in 2023 that we got that review.”

Commissioner Jack Kleinhardt spoke of being in the Wexford County Dispatch Center last summer, when a call came in saying an Amish buggy full of kids had been hit by a truck.

“If you hadn’t seen the intensity of that…,” he said. “I don’t know how you guys do it.”

Terrian’s response was simple: “It’s good training, and good resources.”