[12/30/04]Adding cameras and eliminating access codes for 911 Commission members were among ideas mentioned Wednesday as turmoil continued over employee grievances at the E-911 Dispatch Center.

Vicksburg Fire Chief Keith Rogers, serving as chairman and one of three city delegates to the seven-member commission, said Wednesday it would be up to the Warren County Board of Supervisors to address the grievances that name commissioners who are county employees.

“These grievances have a lot of information for their review,” Rogers said of the documents he plans to give supervisors. “It is disturbing what’s in this packet, I can tell you that right now.” But, he said, members of the commission have no authority over each other.

Warren County’s delegates to the commission, which manages an $800,000 budget and operations of the computerized call center, are Sheriff Martin Pace and District 1 Supervisor David McDonald and two people employed by supervisors, Volunteer Fire Coordinator Kelly Worthy and Emergency Management Director L.W. Callaway.

Although neither Worthy nor Callaway was mentioned as being named in employee complaints, they are the only two county employees on the commission and Worthy, who had been serving as chairman, stepped down from that post last month. In addition to Rogers, city delegates are Mayor Laurence Leyens and Police Chief Tommy Moffett.

The grievances are from two dispatchers who remain on the E-911 staff following the departure during the past two months of four of the center’s 16 employees, including its former director, Allen Maxwell.

Dispatcher Supervisor Peggy Wright is the interim director of the call center. She said its dispatcher count is back up to 13, one shy of its budgeted number of 14. The center’s director and an address coordinator are the two nondispatcher slots.

Two new dispatchers are in training and are expected to be certified by the end of January with training for two other dispatchers, including one yet to be hired, expected to take into February, Wright said.

The center, which answers all 911 calls countywide, lacked a procedure for employees to file grievances against their immediate supervisors, McDonald said, and that lack was partially responsible for its recent personnel problems. “That wasn’t all that started all of this, but that had a lot to do with it,” he said.

Commissioners agreed that a need exists for such procedures to be put in place.

District 4 Supervisor Carl Flanders has also been attempting to get his fellow board members to address the turmoil, but they have responded that McDonald has been designated for that responsibility.

Wednesday, Flanders told the commission that members might ask for the help of an experienced human resources professional to recommend actions. Leyens also called for better-defined procedures.

During the discussion, the subject of video surveillance of the consoles and personnel working in the basement of the Warren County Courthouse arose.

If cameras had been in place when actions and words that precipitated the shakeup occurred, “50 percent of what happened wouldn’t have happened,” McDonald said. “A camera and audio would solve a lot of problems and make Peggy’s job easier.”

While no action was taken on cameras, the commission reversed its decision that each member should be provided with the access code to the center’s door.

“I don’t think we belong in there,” Leyens said, and Rogers said the center’s door could be broken down in an emergency.

The commission also settled a computer-upgrade question that had been discussed the previous month. Instead of continuing to investigate new software costing up to nearly $450,000, commissioners decided to try to make minimal but necessary upgrades to the center’s hardware and operating system while remaining within the current year’s budget for such purchases of $35,000.

Voters approved the consolidated and enhanced dispatching system in 1989 and pay for it through phone bills and supplements from city and county general funds.

The commission is to meet again Jan. 26.