The spotlight on public safety staffing continued Tuesday when dispatching services at the Law Enforcement Center were discussed.

Wednesday, October 18, 2000

The spotlight on public safety staffing continued Tuesday when dispatching services at the Law Enforcement Center were discussed.

First the Austin Police Department was in the spotlight, then the Austin Fire Department. At a Tuesday afternoon joint city and county meeting on the LEC, officials heard the case for increased staffing in dispatching.

"We don’t have the staff we think we need there (in dispatch)," Mower County Sheriff Barry Simonson said in his no-nonsense opening to the discussion. "We’ve had an increase in activity, more aggressive officers, the number of warrants has gone up dramatically and there are new judicial mandates requiring interviews be taped and transcribed that have increased the workload of the dispatchers. I worry about officer safety and I worry about the mental health of the dispatchers."

For bluntness, however, Bob Nelson, former Austin police chief and now the county’s director of emergency management, took the prize.

"I’ve seen what dispatch did in my day when there were always two people on and I’ve seen what they do now," he said. "There’s no comparison … You have a liability problem here and the way I see it, it rests with the governmental bodies. It’s time to get off your can and do something."

Although no final decisions were made, the Law Enforcement Center personnel left Tuesday’s meeting with high hopes that the problem of understaffing in the dispatch area soon would be rectified.

Marlys Sorlie, communications supervisor and a 25-year veteran dispatcher, passed out a description of the duties of the eight women who work in the dispatch area, and showed those gathered there one month’s calendar and all the scheduling problems that occur on a regular basis. Currently she has eight full-time dispatchers in the office, a clerk, plus two staff members who are trained to do dispatch, but who have specialized duties: one is secretary to the detectives, the other takes care of the LEC payroll, warrants, fingerprint checks and other paper work.

"We try to have one dispatcher on duty during the day when there are other people here," Sorlie said, "and two on the other shifts. But if someone is sick or has vacation time, that doesn’t happen," she added, giving as an example a day when two dispatchers covered the whole 24-hour shift, each working 12 hours without a proper break, one of them sick but unable to take her medication because it would make her drowsy. "We need more staff in there before someone gets hurt or someone has a problem and we have no dispatch for some reason … I don’t want it to be on my head if someone gets hurt when everyone knew there’s a problem."

Although two additional dispatchers would be ideal, Sorlie said, she was only asking for an increase of one right now.

"With one more, hopefully we’ll be able to keep two on all but the day shifts and train others to fill in for the specialized jobs when those girls have time off," she said.

After the meeting, City Administrator Pat McGarvey said the city already had included wages for one more dispatcher in its budget for 2001, but the request for more staff in dispatch and new, state-required communication equipment for the entire LEC went to the finance-personnel committee for the City Council for the county so committee members could make a recommendation for the entire council. The same for the county: the personnel committee will make an official recommendation on the issue.