If a deal is sealed between city and county officials on the former Southern Printing building at Clay and First North streets, it will make E-911 Director Geoffrey Greetham happy.

Though price negotiations were still under way, Greetham and Michael Gaul, senior supervisor and training coordinator, met with contractors inside the 5,000-square-foot building.

Greetham said the city-owned building can accommodate all needs mentioned – the jointly funded dispatch center, the Emergency Management Agency, Warren County Election Commission and managers of Vicksburg’s planned mini-bus transportation system.

&#8220This is going to house a $1 million dispatch center down here,” Gaul said as he stood in a large room on the first floor of the building. &#8220We also have office space down here for E-911 and Emergency Management, if they move in.”

Space on the second floor is ideal for training and disaster relief, he said.

&#8220We can have a training area for poll workers and dispatchers, and we can put bunks up here, if the Election Commission doesn’t use the space.”

Bus transportation employees would also have office space on the first floor, Gaul said.

The building does need work, including removing asbestos from the second floor, which will also be used to store 138 suitcase-sized touch-screen voting machines in a climate-controlled area.

The optical-scan machines used since 1990 have been stored in the courthouse basement, where the E-911 Dispatch Center is also located. Greetham said 20 employees have outgrown the space.

&#8220Equipment is crammed together too tightly,” he said, &#8220We have three people in one office, spaghetti wiring, and we have run out of storage room.”

Computers are also out-of-date, Greetham said, and leaks have caused water damage to the low ceiling above the small room where dispatchers work at computer consoles.

A new computer-aided dispatch center, or CAD, is expected by June, when E-911 officials anticipate moving into the building at Clay and First North streets.

CAD will make training easier and operations more efficient, Greetham said. Funding for the $800,000 worth of improvements and an increase in staff were included in this year’s budget.