Council Approves Fee For E-911
Merger of city, county 911 centers is slated to begin in April, 2008.

Laurie Wink
The News-Dispatch

LA PORTE - A more efficient, effective emergency management system is expected to result from a merger of the Michigan City 911 center with the La Porte County E-911 service, beginning in April 2008.

The county council adopted an ordinance Monday to increase the county-wide fee for emergency telephone service from the current 74 cents per month to $2.21. The fee is added to user's monthly phone bills. The fee increase - the first since 1994 - is needed to enhance the emergency telephone system and support dispatch employees transferring from Michigan City.

Council member John Jones, a member of the county's E-911 Advisory Board and head of the committee studying the merger, said La Porte is one of only two Indiana counties with the lowest 911 surcharge.

The county dispatchers handle a total of 80,000 calls a year, half of which are 911 emergency calls. Michigan City dispatchers receive more than 50,000 calls a year.

In reality, La Porte County dispatchers take all county emergency calls and transfer calls regarding Michigan City to the city dispatchers.

Michigan City Police Chief Ben Neitzel said callers become irritated when they are dealing with an emergency situation and have to repeat the same information twice. Neitzel said he was not sure how many of the city's nine dispatchers will opt to transfer to the county center.

"This came up in the late 1990s and there was a big groundswell that didn't want it," Neitzel said. "I do think it's the right thing to do."

Michigan City fire chief Dave Lamb sees the merger as a move that will improve communications. He said the Sept. 11 tragedy showed that "communication is our downfall."

"Now, the dispatchers will know about all that's happening in the county," Lamb said.

Long Beach Police Chief Bob Sulkowski echoed others' comments. He said, "This should have happened in 1990 but because of politics it didn't happen. We're here today to set things straight. It's a move that's happening all over the country."

In fact, the state of Indiana is likely to require all counties to streamline emergency telephone services into one E-911 center.

The new, expanded E-911 center in the county complex building will be able to handle the merger. Brent Sollar, E-911 director, said his department will move in on Nov. 19 and will be trained to use the new equipment before the move.

"We're under budget and on schedule," Sollar said.

11/19/2007 11:00:00 AM Email this article • Print this article
New E-911 Center Opening

Laurie Wink
The News-Dispatch

LA PORTE - Brent Soller is about as happy as a kid on Christmas morning now that the long-awaited county E-911 center is opening in the La Porte County Complex.

At an open house Saturday, Soller showed county residents the state-of-the-art equipment that could help save their lives. The system can speed response time in emergencies, said Soller, director of county emergency services, who expects to have the new center up and running by today, if some minor items can be arranged.

The center is on the first floor of the complex, in the back half of what used to be the La Porte County Historical Society Museum. Soller said it is twice the size of the current location.

The space will be needed when eight Michigan City emergency employees join the county, an arrangement still being negotiated by the County Council. The merger anticipates approval of a state mandate to have one public-service answering point per county by 2009.

In the basement of the county building, the current center's cave-like space is a stark contrast to the bright, airy room upstairs. The department clearly has outgrown its space - barely accommodating four consoles - and has suffered water damage on two occasions. The operators use equipment that's more than 19 years old.

"The equipment is beat. It's on 24-7," Soller said. "It doesn't get turned off."

He said the old components have no resale value.

Now, employees will have access to the latest high-grade radio and phone systems. The room features sound-proofing material, static-free carpet tile and console platforms that can be raised or lowered, allowing operators to stand or sit.

On Thursday, some of the 25 full- and part-time emergency personnel were being trained to use the equipment installed in a total of eight consoles, each with five computer screens. One screen is for the phone, another accesses the motor vehicle record system and the third connects to police, fire and sheriff departments, as well a pursuit channel. A fourth screen is for computer-aided dispatch, and the fifth is a mapping screen.

Soller said GIS mapping should be ready in about a month, once Plant Emergency Communication System finishes configuring county-supplied information with its computer systems.

"When someone calls from a cellular phone, the new software will use three cell towers to determine the location from the reported longitude and latitude," Soller said. "A lot of travelers don't know where they are, especially at night. Now, they'll show up on a map."

Michigan City architectural firm dh2w designed the center and received approval from the Fire and Building Services Division of Indiana Homeland Security. Soller said dh2w did a good job keeping the project on schedule and on budget.

"They amaze me," he said.

Building and equipping the county's new E-911 department cost $3.5 million. The Motorola telephone and radio equipment was installed by Minor Electronics, Munster, Ind.

Dave Michener, a training consultant hired by Plant, said emergency management equipment is constantly evolving. The VESTA computer screens that will be used by county E-911 operators can shave seconds off call-response times because critically needed phone numbers appear automatically, rather than operators having to memorize dozens of numbers.

"If a person is not breathing, you only have so many seconds," Michener said. "The 911 center is the place where operators can talk with the person who needs help. We're making their jobs faster and easier."

Paige Young, a shift supervisor, said she is excited about using the new equipment.

"In the long run, it will be much better," she said. "We're taking it slow and getting used to it. We want to feel comfortable with it."

Young said she's heard about getting a new center and new equipment throughout the eight years she's worked for E-911, and several times it almost happened.

"We said we'd believe it when we see it," Young said.

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Contact Laurie Wink at lwink@thenewsdispatch.com.

2/20/2008 10:12:00 AM
A Hitch In E-911 Plans

Rick Richards
City Editor, The News-Dispatch

MICHIGAN CITY - The merger of Michigan City's emergency dispatchers with the new E-911 Center operated by La Porte County isn't going as smoothly as city officials hoped.

On Tuesday, a grievance was presented to the Board of Public Works and Safety from two of the nine city dispatchers who said they didn't want to transfer to La Porte County.

The city has nine dispatchers and as many as six could file grievances through the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union.

Board attorney John Espar said that when the decision was made to go to a single, county-wide dispatch center, Michigan City negotiated with La Porte County to make sure all of its dispatchers would have jobs with the county. Espar called the package that was negotiated with the county "generous."

While employees receive a raise - in some cases $9,000 a year - that raise is being offset by higher out-of-pocket insurance expenses that are as much as $4,000 a year per family member.

Dispatcher Lavern Gill-Jefferson told the board that the package wasn't as generous as it was being described. She said her $9,000 pay raise is nearly eaten up with $8,000 in insurance costs for her and her husband. "And that doesn't count the cost of gas to drive back and forth to La Porte," she said.

Gill-Jefferson and other dispatchers have asked the union to notify the city that they want to exercise their bumping rights under their contract to take other comparable city jobs so they don't have to make the move to La Porte.

At the same time, however, another grievance has been filed by employees who could be bumped, who are also represented by AFSCME. The union is trying to keep them from being bumped.

Espar said the union is representing two "diametrically opposite views" and the issue needs to be clarified.

The board told Espar to write a letter to the union asking it to clarify its position and to state which employees it is representing.

"They seem to be on both sides on this," Espar said.