Earth Calling Mars.

“We are paying $ 315,000 grand or so for a "communications"

system in Middlebury and we are paying for a "communications" 

system in Prospect and we "need" to pay for a two million dollar new

"communications" system and the fire dept has a grant of $ 300,000

grand for a "communications" system. Who are we "communicating" with, Mars ?”

I don’t know why the communications system is such a difficult concept for Mr. DeAngelis to understand.  Lets give it another shot.

Why did Fire and EMS leave Middlebury in the first place?  A couple of years ago the State of Connecticut mandated that all towns must have EMD services.  EMD stands for Emergency Medical Dispatch.  All the folks up at Communications had to take a State certified EMD course. So everyone up at HQ is trained, so what is the problem?  Why can’t they do it?

Well, they can, but there is one small hitch.  When a caller dials 911 and gets one of our dispatchers, by State law, the dispatcher must remain on the line delivering lifesaving instructions and gathering a whole bunch of information. Since there is only one dispatcher working at a time, the dispatcher cannot answer routine calls, other emergency calls, communicate with police officers, the MVFD, or the Public Works.  In addition, they can not even dispatch the call.  The result is a delayed response. 

So what were the options.

1) Farm Fire and EMS communications out to Northwest C-Med.  Hey wait a minute! Why do you have to farm Fire out?  Why can’t that stay?  Well it could, but -

A) It would create confusion.  FD11 and the apparatus roll together at motor vehicles accidents, structure fires and rescues.  It would make little sense for the FD to be talking to one dispatcher, and the ambulance talking to another.  The crosstalk would seriously jeopardize patient care and safety.

B) Since the majority of calls received by the MVFD are of a medical nature, the cost savings was not significant when compared to the disadvantages to separate the two responses with two dispatchers.

2) You could keep dispatch 100% in-house, but the Town would need to hire another dispatcher to work at the same time.  That would be the ultimate, but it would be expensive.  

According to this year’s budget figures -

Salaries $175,000.

Holiday, Vacation, And Sick $53,552.

Total - $228,552.39

Now we are going to have to increase this by two, so the new cost would be about -

 $457,104.00.  Wow thats a lot of money.  

So which is better?  Do we pay an extra $228,552. each year so that the Town can comply with the State’s mandated EMD program, or do we pay Northwest C-MED $42,000.00 to do the job for us?

You make the call.

I don’t know all that much about police communications, except that I do know the present system is not adequate, and is a direct threat to police officer safety. If a police officer is not safe, then you are not safe.  

There are several dead spots in town where the police radios are absolutely worthless.  I have witnessed police officers standing 150 feet away from each other not able to communicate through their portables.  When the only way they can communicate is through their Nextel phones, we have a problem.  Its time to upgrade the radios to the 21st century and high-band.

You can talk about the high-bands as being state-of-the-art. They are the radio system of choice. You can talk about all the area towns that are going to or have gone to high-band.  The MVFD has high-band so the officers could communicate with them.  There are a great many reasons to switch.  

But, it all comes down to the number one most important reason, and that is the safety of our police officers. Police officer safety equals community safety.

No one that I know here wants to communicate to anyone on Mars, they just want our police officers safe. The radio system must be upgraded.  Until a solution is found for EMD, than Fire and EMS communications must stay at Northwest. $42,000 is a lot more attractive than an additional $228,552.