officials seek increase in pay checks

A push to keep pace with industry standards and improved ability to track call volumes are reason enough to raise all salaries at the E-911 Dispatch Center, said Michael Gaul, director of the city-county agency.

Logs show 38,666 calls received since centralized dispatch operations moved to a new base at Clay and First North streets Jan. 29.

Of those, 23,492 were emergency calls — a figure fast approaching the estimated 27,545 emergency calls taken for all of 2008.

The need for additional manpower and higher salaries is the next challenge, now that upgraded technology makes progress reports easier and the three-year wait to move into a new center is over.

“We should have at least 24 full-time dispatchers,” Gaul said during budget talks Wednesday with the E-911 Commission as he referenced recommendations on ideal staffing from Project RETAINS, a multiyear study of public safety communications by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials and the University of Denver.

Four versions of the 2009-10 budget for the dispatch center would add three full-time positions to achieve that standard and contain a 24 percent pay raise for Gaul and a 7 percent raise for deputy director Nicole Vera. The positions pay $48,500 and $44,720, respectively.

Raises for 17 budgeted hourly dispatcher positions are also in the works, based on a step-system organized by rank and tenure. Overtime hours available in the coming year could vary from 220 to 256, with only the latter poised to raise overall spending in the center above this year’s $1.35 million spending plan.

While the issue of managerial raises did not come up before five commission members who met Wednesday, Gaul later said a raise would close his gap with his counterparts in Alabama and Louisiana who average $70,000 annually.

Adoption of a budget is expected in August, just before city and county boards adopt operating budgets for the new fiscal year. County Administrator John Smith appeared at Wednesday’s meeting and did not recommend one version over another, but said dispatcher raises would have to fit within a county budget with minimal growth from land values.

“We are still paying for the CAD system,” Smith said, of the center’s integrated call-location and dispatching system that, coupled with the new physical plant, cost about $1 million.

“What I’m trying to do by design is to build up our cash reserve from now into the future so future commissions and boards of supervisors will pay for a CAD system instead of going into debt.”

Members of the commission include the Vicksburg mayor, police chief, fire chief, the Warren County sheriff, emergency management director, fire coordinator and a county supervisor.

Ending cash balances on each budget version under consideration averages about $500,000, depending on overtime. Local government contributions to dispatcher salaries vary — in the case of the county, anywhere from $5,400 to $57,000 — depending on the size of dispatcher raises. Commissioners met Wednesday at the same hour as Paul Winfield’s swearing-in as Vicksburg mayor.

The center’s ability to locate callers by location on cell phone calls is increasing, Gaul said, but capability to track calls from all cell phone providers is at least a year out. The center has been asked by the Office of Law Enforcement, Emergency Telecommunications & Jail Officer Standards and Training for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety to continue preparations to track calls from cell phones and Voice-over Internet Protocol so it can be the first E-911 center in Mississippi to be certified by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc.

Formerly separate, law enforcement and fire dispatch functions for Vicksburg and Warren County were consolidated by referendum in 1988, with service starting three years later. Municipal funds pay 65 percent of dispatcher salaries and county funds pay for 35 percent. Managerial salaries remain paid out of 911 surcharges paid on residential and cell phone bills. Attempts on the state legislative level to raise 911 fees on cell phones have failed, as has efforts to steer more general fund revenue toward upper management salaries to make up for ever-rising use of cell phones to place emergency calls.

About 62 percent of emergency calls to the center in 2008 were from cell phones. So far this year, 16,036 calls have been placed by cell phone or Voice-over Internet Protocol, or about 68 percent of emergency calls.

*

Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com