FARMINGTON – Commissioners and several of the county’s public safety department heads met today, discussing one of the most critical aspects of what they do.
Communicate.
Farmington Selectman Chair Stephen Bunker introduced the subject to the commissioners, along with Jay Police Department Chief Larry White Sr., Farmington Police Department Chief Richard Caton III, Farmington Fire Department Chief Terry Bell, Franklin County Emergency Management Agency Tim Hardy and others who spoke in favor of upgrading the county dispatch service’s software.
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That software is critical. Fire, police, ambulance services and corrections officers use software and a linked computer system to quickly find and share information. The speed at which they can access the information, and the ease at which they can share it with other agencies, can make enormous differences for the public safety personnel.
However, according to Bunker, who sits on the Maine Fire Protection Services Commission, the software used by the county dispatch office is out of date.
“In my view, as I travel throughout the state,” Bunker said, “we aren’t on the cutting edge of computer technology here.”
Bunker noted that the dispatch services themselves were excellent, comparing very favorably to ones he had visited across the state, but that the software in use was years out of date. According to Caton, the software systems currently used by Franklin County, Farmington and elsewhere is more than 15 years old. It’s not user-friendly, time-consuming and doesn’t share information very well.
“Presently what the dispatch has,” Bell said, “doesn’t help out the fire department very much.”
Four local departments, on the other hand, used far more modern software. Jay, Carrabassett Valley, Rangeley and the University of Maine at Farmington public safety office use a product made by the Informations Management Corporation, or IMC.
White said the system, installed three years ago, worked very well in Jay. Dispatchers only need a few pieces of information to pull up a file, and the system is linked with Androscoggin and York County departments.
“It’s a time saving device as well, for the dispatchers,” White said.
Bunker, Caton and others told commissioners that the time to begin looking at new software types was now, when several new grant opportunities had recently become available through the federal stimulus money and other avenues.
The software is expensive. Buying the package was expected to cost somewhere in the six-figure range.
“It is astronomical,” Caton said. However, he also added that there was several potential grants which could fund the software upgrades.
“With the recovery act and stimulus money,” he said, “there are more grants to make the jump to the new software.”
In addition to federal funding though the stimulus package, Hardy said that the Department of Homeland Security’s grant program remained a possibility. Bell plans on looking into getting funding through the Fire Act program, which would require a 10 percent local match.
Commissioners supported the plan, but had questions of their own. Commissioner Gary McGrane, of Jay, wanted to make sure that a program could be found that would work with both the state’s new system as well as local communities which had already upgraded their software. McGrane wondered if so many agencies and departments could come together and make a decision on which single software package to purchase.
Farmington’s Deputy Fire Chief Clyde Ross, who has served on the Regional Radio Committee, thought that wouldn’t be a problem, noting that the committee had come together on “difficult terms” in several cases to put forward a “collaborative effort.”
“I think we have a great degree of trust due to the work we’ve done together,” he said.
Commissioner Fred Hardy, of New Sharon, said that his biggest concern was that the state would take over the dispatch office after the county invests in new software, much like the jail system was taken over.
“Is there any way we can trust the state not to whisk this all away from us?” Hardy asked.
“No,” Sheriff Dennis Pike said.
That is a concern among several of the local department heads. Franklin County is a large, hilly region and some of the chiefs said that they were concerned that a more distant dispatch office would not function as efficiently as the current one does.
“We do not want to lose that dispatch,” Bell said.
Commissioners moved to have the process go forward, with the various agencies looking for ways to fund the new software. They also asked to keep lines of communication between the departments and commissioners open.
