Source: Union-News (Springfield, MA)
Author: NATALIA MUNOZ
NORTHAMPTON, MA – The state police Northampton barracks might become the county’s disptach center for fire and police calls from small towns, Hampshire County administrator Bambridge Peterson said yesterday.
Last Thursday, the county commissioners’ public safety committee met with Capt. James Sheehan of the Northampton barracks of the State Police.
According to officials at that meeting, Sheehan said the barracks could become the dispatch center for most towns in the county for free.
Peterson said if the state police do become the dispatch center towns would not have to worry about paying for their own 911 dispatch center, a costly venture.
‘Major breakthrough’
“It would be a major breakthrough,” Peterson told commissioners at their executive committee meeting.
Two years ago, state legislators required that all communities have Enhanced-911, which within seconds traces where the call is coming from and who lives at that address.
A one-year deadline to install the systems will be set as soon as the State Emergency Telecommunications Board issues guidelines.
Hampshire County commissioners have been looking for ways to regionalize E-911 since last fall.
Toll call for some
Residents in most county communities have to dial seven digits before reaching fire and police departments, and many have to dial 1 plus the number because the dispatch center is in another town considered long distance. Williamsburg residents, for instance, have to call the Amherst Fire Department, a toll call.
If State Police’s Northampton barracks becomes the dispatch center, then residents dialing 911 would be connected to the barracks, which would then coordinate services, such as ambulance, police and fire back up.
To operate with Enhanced-911, the towns would have provide the center with information on roads, names and addresses in the towns for the dispatch center computer. The state would supply the equipment for the Enhanced-911 system, according to Goshen Fire Chief Francis Dresser.
Dresser, who is on the public safety committee’s subcommittee on communications, said his committee is going to write down what the State Police would be required to do, to ensure that Sheehan’s offer “was understood correctly.”
“We want to be sure we’re both talking the same language,” he said.