Call center promises expanded capabilities
The 911 call center that will serve as the nexus of the communication upgrade making Garland County a full-time user on the Arkansas Wireless Information Network should be functional by the end of the year, the county’s Department of Emergency Management informed justices of the peace earlier this week.
Department Director Bo Robertson told a joint meeting of the Garland County Quorum Court’s Environmental Services, Public Works and Buildings and Public Health, Welfare and Safety committees that the former detention center should be fully equipped by November or December.
The quorum court appropriated $779,332 in February from unanticipated revenue accruing to the county treasury at the end of last year to create the 911 Dispatch Center Budget. Ninety percent of the appropriation, or $701,398, was directed toward converting the booking area of the old jail into the county’s 911 public-safety answering point, or PSAP.
The 5,000-square-foot facility will be able to receive 911 calls and dispatch Garland County Sheriff’s Department personnel and all of the county’s volunteer fire departments. The sheriff’s department’s 2017 budget includes funds to hire five additional dispatchers for the new PSAP, giving the county 14 dispatchers to man the PSAP’s five consoles.
Robertson said the added personnel will allow a minimum of four dispatchers to provide round-the-clock staffing, with five available during times of heightened call volume. The county’s current PSAP inside the sheriff’s office
is staffed by one person at times, Robertson told JPs.
The new PSAP will be under the Department of Emergency Management’s authority to foster parity between sheriff’s office and volunteer fire service calls.
“We want the fire departments to have equal priority in public safety,” Robertson said. “We want to make sure everyone has equal prioritization and ensure the sheriff’s department’s calls don’t take priority. The decision was supported by (Sheriff Mike McCormick), as well.”
Volunteer fire departments are currently dispatched by the call center at LifeNet Emergency Medical Services on Ouachita Avenue. The PSAP in the sheriff’s office and the city’s PSAP inside the Hot Springs Police Department receive 911 calls for ambulance and volunteer fire service and transfers those calls to LifeNet.
The two PSAPs also have to transfer 911 calls for Arkansas State Police service to the Trook K call center on Karen Street and emergency service in Hot Springs Village to the Village call center. Robertson said reducing the number of transfers is one of the priorities of the county’s communication upgrade.
Cellphone calls made inside the city are supposed to be received by the city PSAP, and the county PSAP is supposed to receive cellphone calls from the unincorporated area of the county. Robertson said the pattern doesn’t always prevail, as evidenced by testing earlier this year of the panic-button system at the Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts. Robertson said calls from the school on Whittington Avenue in downtown Hot Springs went to the county PSAP.
“Part of the overall goal is to drop down on the number of transfers,” Robertson said, noting that call destination is a function of which cellphone tower receives the call. “The more transfers, the more delay. When someone dials 911, we want whoever answers that call to be able to send help that way and there be no delay caused by a transfer that can add precious seconds to the process.”
In December, LifeNet announced its intention to join the expanded city PSAP. Part of the 2.6 mills Hot Springs levied for its General Fund in the 2016 tax year will double the number of consoles inside the city PSAP, allowing calls for ambulance service to be received and dispatched from one location. LifeNet said the partnership made sense in light of 69 percent of its calls for service emanating from inside the city.
The tax levy is in support of the city’s Project 25 Phase 2 Radio system. The city is still evaluating proposals Harris Corp. and Motorola Solutions presented in April as part of their bids on what’s expected to be more than a $6 million project. Motorola is the state’s Arkansas Wireless Information Network contractor, but it’s unclear if the submissions include a proposal to make the city a full-time AWIN user. The city said the proposals are exempt from the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.
The city is currently evaluating the proposals. Robertson said the county can begin working on an agreement with the city to share communication channels once it makes a decision on whether it’s going to join AWIN or use a proprietary system it would be responsible for maintaining. The county’s $5.58 million project to join AWIN full time will give its emergency and public service operations 30 channels, or talk groups.
Robertson told JPs the county already has agreements in place to share AWIN channels with the state police, the National Park Service, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Village public-safety entities. The agreements will allow the county’s public-safety personnel to communicate seamlessly with those agencies, Robertson said.
“We can have true interoperability,” he said. The county’s acceptance as a full-time AWIN user was conditioned on it improving the infrastructure used by over 900 local, state and federal agencies on AWIN, as the over 400 radios the county is adding to the system requires area communication towers to be upgraded.
Robertson said two new communication towers the county’s adding to AWIN on Pearcy Mountain and Ouachita Pinnacle Mountain north of Lake Ouachita will improve radio coverage for multiple agencies. He told JPs earlier this year that AWIN will build the latter tower at no cost to the county. Ouachita Pinnacle is one of the highest points in the state, making a tower there a critical AWIN component.
“It will help not just us, but the Game and Fish, the state police and every public safety entity on AWIN,” he said Thursday.
A microwave dish held aloft by the 100-foot high tower that will extend from the county’s new PSAP will link it to the communication tower on West Mountain. A relay being added to the West Mountain site will link it to the tower on Blowout Mountain northwest of the city. Robertson said from there, the county will have a direct link to towers in Little Rock and be able to connect to the towers on Ouachita Pinnacle and Pearcy mountains.