up and on after 3-year wait|170 calls answered in first 19 hours

More than three years of planning and work culminated with three words at 1:10 p.m. Thursday.

“You’re on air,” a technician said, confirming all systems were ready at the new E-911 Dispatch Center, now officially operating from First North and Clay streets. Calls began lighting up consoles on which telephone customers and local taxpayers have invested millions of dollars.

The transition was eagerly awaited by the 17-member dispatch staff who’ve been working in two cramped rooms under the front steps of the Warren County Courthouse for about 15 years. The basement rooms, susceptible to ceiling tile leaks overhead from condensation and rainfall, won’t be missed.

“Coming from where we came from, I think we’re going to like it,” dispatcher Rhonda Woolley said.

Also new is the center’s ability to locate callers during emergencies with technology that pinpoints the location of cell phone callers, who now comprise about two-thirds of the local center’s call volume.

In a twist not so ironic to E-911 staff, one of the first calls came in from a cell phone disconnected for regular calls but, in accordance with Federal Communications Commission rules, is still enabled for 911 calls.

“That goes to show how many we get,” E-911 deputy director Nicole Vera said. The calls frustrate dispatchers, because many are prank or made from discarded cell phones in the hands of children. Because the emergency feature works and nothing else does, dispatchers can’t call back to determine if there’s a real emergency.

As of 8 a.m. today, dispatchers had fielded 170 calls since the new facility went online, E-911 director Michael Gaul said.

Another part of the upgraded Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD) system is its capability to handle Voice-over Internet Protocol, or the delivery of voice communications over the Internet, an emerging method of data transfer that can handle more information than traditional circuitry.

The Vicksburg Warren center is among the first in the state to be prepared for both emerging technologies, said Dianne Berry, an analyst in the Office of Law Enforcement, Emergency Telecommunications & Jail Officer Standards and Training for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety.

“We will use the center as a model for when more centers have Phase II,” Berry said.

Consolidating formerly separate dispatch functions for fire, police, sheriff’s department and other agencies was approved by local voters in a 1988 referendum and service started three years later. The vote included agreement to pay for the center and hefty tolls for technology and database access through monthly fees on wired phone lines and, now, cell phones, too. The first location for the equipment and staff was in a squad room of the Warren County Jail. The courthouse basement was next.

A seven-member group of designated city and county officials governs operations. Efforts stepped up in 2005 to upgrade technical capability and furnishings, a mission that quickly went hand-in-hand with increasing the budget from $800,000 annually to $1.8 million. The new center, the former Southern Printing building and later a city office building, was purchased from the city by Warren County in March 2006 for $230,000. A portion of the space is also used to store touch-screen voting machines.

Updating the building’s electrical grid to handle emergency dispatch delayed the project’s completion into this year. Besides new desks and furniture, the finished product offers amenities such as an expanded break room and kitchen with a stove, a conference room and locker space. The equipment room is spacious by industry standards and houses the main server and system battery, both kept in tall, cage-like lockers more than 6-feet tall.

“It’s been a lot more than just turning on a few computers,” Gaul said.

Additional equipment to allow local authorities to view the status of in-progress emergencies from their office monitors is on the way, as commissioners on Wednesday approved an $8,000 change order to the CAD contract to pay for it.

The operating budget — frequently a topic of contention — has resettled to about $1.4 million per year. Phone fees don’t provide all of that and there have been near-annual showdowns over how fairly to calculate city and county supplements.

Supervisors have the authority to decide the next use for the courthouse basement space. No decision has been announced.

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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com.