The E-911 dispatch center’s new director’s plans to increase training to lessen the center’s dependence on key people were approved Wednesday by the center’s board.

As promised, the director since March 1, Geoffrey Greetham, presented commissioners at the end of his first month on the job with an assessment of aspects of the center’s management that need “short-term addressing” and with target dates for completing other tasks and plans.

Greetham succeeded longtime dispatcher supervisor and interim director Peggy Wright and, previously, former director Allen Maxwell.

Maxwell resigned Nov. 3 and 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.

After about his first week on the job, Greetham had told commissioners the center’s problems included a lack of standardized training processes and said he planned to present a more-specific plan for the future at Wednesday’s meeting. His comments followed a January letter from the Warren County Board of Supervisors to the E-911 Commission saying that “uniform operating procedures in relation to employment issues and personnel practices” were needed at the center.

“We’re doing business and we’re doing it OK,” Greetham told commissioners then. “But if key people fall off the planet tomorrow there’s no way to replicate it.”

Five of the seven members of the E-911 commission attended and they unanimously approved Greetham’s goals, which included about five target completion dates over the remainder of the year for completing plans to address specific aspects of the center’s operations.

Mayor Laurence Leyens, a member of the commission, recommended that Greetham move one of Greetham’s proposed dates from December to before Oct. 1 to synchronize the center’s planning in that aspect with the city government’s fiscal year.

Greetham said the center has 15 dispatchers, including a military veteran returning from Iraq just hired. He requested approval to increase that number to 17 until Oct. 1. One of the additional employees would be a dispatcher and the other a senior dispatch supervisor who would be paid at about the level of Wright.

Greetham said Wright had not worked as a dispatcher since he became director and that she had accumulated at least two months’ leave, including sick leave and vacation.

Contacted by phone at her home, Wright said she had been dealing with stress and that she was involved in an automobile accident for which she was continuing to receive treatment. She said she still wasn’t satisfied with how the E-911 commission had handled complaints she and other dispatchers had lodged about events that occurred before the shakeup.

“There are issues that have not been answered by the board of directors to my satisfaction,” she said.

On Leyens’ recommendation, the board directed Greetham to present at its next meeting his recommendations for job descriptions and reporting relationships in the management of the center. At least one proposed organization chart had been taken under advisement by the commission at its Feb. 1 meeting, noted the commission’s chairman, Vicksburg Fire Chief Keith Rogers.

The center’s address officer, Kenny Staggs, seemed to have been handling many of the duties Greetham said he wanted his recommended new hire as senior dispatch supervisor to handle, Leyens said.

“Define the positions; don’t plug people into it,” Leyens told Greetham.

And on Leyens’ recommendation the board approved the hiring of one additional dispatcher.

In other business, the commission: