By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
As Ellis County officials continue to work to transform the county’s dispatch center into one of the most state-of-the-art in the region, they hope that one of the next proposed changes goes unnoticed by the public.
The Ellis County Dispatch Center is a joint effort by the city of Hays and Ellis County. The county owns the equipment, and the city employs the 14 staff members who work at the emergency dispatch center.
Ellis County Commissioner Michael Berges said through the budgeting process Ellis County is preparing to take on those 14 employees during the next three years.
“That'll be over a million dollars worth of employee benefits and salaries,” Berges said. “So, we’re working with the city commissioners (and) the dispatch employees to get that moved forward for January.”
The county has used federal COVID relief funds, both American Rescue Plan Act and Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act funds to help pay for the significant improvements to the dispatch center over the last two years.
County Administrator and Fire Chief Darin Myers has helped to lead the implantation of the new system.
“We've made some pretty significant investments into the dispatch center to include a new computer-aided dispatch system and records management system that houses all that data,” Myers said.
Emergency vehicles now have mobile data terminals that allow dispatch to send information directly to those vehicles through the new interface. They are working to implement all of the new technologies available through the new system.
Myers said the possibility of a change has been discussed for several years.
“This has actually been talked about for 10-20 years since I've been in service,” Myers said. “I started with Hays Fire in 2001, and it was talked about clear back then what this might look like in the future.”
Myers added with the possible relocation of the Hays Police Department from 105 W. 12th St. to Main Street, there will be a lot more room to accommodate the changes.
Berges said it will create a new communications department with the county.
“It's communications departments. We're adding essentially a new department. It's not under the sheriff and in the police (or) the sheriff's department in the jail. It'll be its own department,” Berges said.
As part of the improvements, the county approved the installation of a new communications tower north of Hays in an area where communication was spotty.
“That was one of the big deficiencies that we saw on that for county fire was lack of radio communications,” Myers said.
County officials are also working on a backup dispatch center that will be used in the event of a disruption in services. Currently, emergency calls are covered by another county when dispatch is experiencing issues.
“That way if something ever does happen at one facility, we have a facility here we don't have to transfer 911 calls or put that burden on a different county dispatch system,” Myers said.
Myers said they plan to use federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to purchase that equipment. They plan to have a proposal put together later this year.
Dispatch and the future of the law enforcement are expected to be topics of discussion at a joint Ellis County and Hays City Commission meeting later this year.