Whether or not, and it appears that’s the goal, Montville officials believe regionalized emergency dispatch would not only save money, the is the ideal location to house it.
“It’s something we’ve talked about for many years,” said “The goal is to promote regionalization to save money.”
And it would be just fine with McDaniel and other town officials if Montville was dispatch home base for any and all interested towns.
“It’s exactly what we envisioned,” McDaniel said. “We look at this an opportunity. Yes, there would be some upfront costs, but there would be long term benefits.”
McDaniel said the public safety building is being “built to accommodate additional dispatchers.”
“It’s now really a matter of crunching the numbers, seeing an RFP. I don’t know where this will go, but it’s a good revenue opportunity for us and because more grants become available when you have more than just a population of 19,000.”
Town Council Chair Candy Buebendorf is the council liaison to the committee studying potential regionalization.
“Anticipation of Montville housing a regional dispatch center was an integral component of the Public Safety Building Plan,” she said. “It is past time for municipalities in Connecticut to regionalize as much as possible in order to improve efficiencies and save money. It would be good for Montville and for any towns that choose to participate.”
Councilor Rosetta Jones took a different, but parallel track in support of regionalization.
“Our region was especially hard hit by Hurricane Irene, a regionalized emergency dispatch center could be extremely instrumental in facilitating better communication in expediting utility restoration, evacuation coordination, and medical services, in these types of multi-town emergency events,” she said.
This week, a meeting of public safety representatives from neighboring towns met in Ledyard to talk about regionalization and a possible bid process for contracting with Ledyard to handle their dispatch (and that of Preston, which Ledyard handles) which is currently done in house. Calls to 911 go to local dispatch and then are transferred to
“It could have some redundancies, but that could be worked out,” McDaniel said of regionalization.
And he said that save for training, the building will be operational in November or December and the technology is in place for dispatch services.
