Funds short for 911 Center

• By BOB ANDERSON
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: May 12, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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SATSUMA — After overcoming a severe financial situation in which it had to seek help from fire departments and municipalities in 2006, the Livingston Parish 911 Center faces another monetary crunch.

The parish’s fire chiefs like the job the 911 Center is doing, but this time the 11 fire departments cannot afford to help because they are facing high fuel costs, said Brian Drury, president of the Livingston Parish Fire Chiefs Association.

At the same time, the 911 Center’s equipment is becoming outdated, and lacks a local backup, said 911 officials, who also say the center’s dispatchers are underpaid and being lost to other agencies.

Telephone tariffs, which are the center’s only source of funding, are paying 85 percent to 90 percent of what the 911 Center needs to meet payrolls and to maintain, replace and upgrade equipment, said Derral Jones, who heads the 911 board’s finance committee.
Livingston’s 911 Center has higher costs than other 911 systems because it doesn’t just answer emergency calls and route them to the appropriate agencies, said Fred Banks, chairman of Livingston’s 911 board.

The center also hires people to dispatch fire and police calls, he said.

“We’ve got a great system,” Denham Springs Fire Chief Ivy “Woody” Cutrer said of the 911 Center. “It’s a lot better than most places have.”

He said he thinks it would be a shame to have to de-centralize the system.

Having 911 call takers and dispatchers face-to-face creates an efficient system, Sheriff Willie Graves agreed.

He said he thinks the system speeds up the emergency response process and also allows dispatchers from different agencies to help each other when one of them gets overburdened.

“Everybody is cross-trained,” Graves said. “They can move from one seat to another and pick up the slack.”

The Sheriff’s Office supplies its own dispatchers to work at the 911 Center, but the center supplies the dispatchers for the parish’s fire departments and for Denham Springs police.

The most immediate need is to increase pay for dispatchers and call takers, who are being hired away by other agencies for considerably higher pay, said Ronnie Cotton, director of the  911  Center.

Livingston pays its entry level people $9.25 an hour compared with the $12 to $17 paid by agencies in surrounding parishes, he said.