management needs work, new director says|[3/5/05]

More and better management is sorely needed at the dispatch center for emergency calls, its new director said after his first week on the job.

Geoffrey Greetham, the new director, gave his assessment after spending parts or all of eight work days around the center.

Personnel practices, record-keeping and the placement of communications equipment and appearance of the center’s interior are among the areas that need improvement, he told the governing board for the consolidated city-county center, the Warren County E-911 Commission, at a special meeting Friday morning.

Greetham, 51, officially started work Tuesday, about four months after the previous director, Allen Maxwell, resigned Nov. 3. Personnel problems that had been ongoing at the center since at least Oct. 4 subsequently came to light. A shakeup that also included a change at the commission’s chairmanship and the resignations or firings of several dispatchers ensued.

In January the Warren County Board of Supervisors sent a letter to the E-911 commission saying that “uniform operating procedures in relation to employment issues and personnel practices” were needed.

“Leadership is woefully lacking,” Greetham told commissioners Friday of the center’s state when he took over. “We’ve got a couple of shift supervisors with experience, and some have some potential. But we don’t have shift supervisors who are qualified and trained.”

“The quality varies,” Greetham said of his current dispatch staff of 12, two short of full. “Some folks are real good.”

Still, the training materials in the center need to be updated and standardized, he added.

“We have no training processes,” he said.

Greetham also commented on the rooms of the center itself, in the basement of the Warren County Courthouse. Its workspace is “not conducive to an environment that attracts good people, that keeps good people and that keeps people motivated.”

Greetham showed commissioners photos of water damage to ceiling tiles of the center and of critical electronic or radio equipment he said had been positioned underneath water lines and thus at unnecessary risk of accidental water damage.

Laurence Leyens, who as the Vicksburg mayor also serves as a member of the commission, said Greetham’s assessment confirmed many of his suspicions about problems the center had.

“You should be able to be an autonomous manager,” he told Greetham, adding a request that Greetham develop a list of performance goals, on progress toward which he could expect to be evaluated by the commission.

Asked later about his schedule to develop such goals, Greetham said he hoped to have them ready by March 30, the date for the commission’s next regularly scheduled meeting.

Greetham served 18 years in the Army and has 10 years’ experience in the private sector, including work as a project manager of cellular-communications systems. The board hired him, at a salary of $45,000, from among about 71 applicants for the job.

Greetham said he wants to hire two dispatchers and that two candidates for those openings are scheduled to be interviewed next week. Applications for the openings will still be accepted, he added.