It's Your Money

A few weeks ago we mentioned that members of our Board of Directors visited the County’s 911 call center.  The main point in that article was the overuse of the 911 phone lines for routine matters.  We also wanted to pass on the information that this could be resolved if more people knew about our local 211 call center.   This call center is prepared and equipped to handle almost any non-emergency issue from routine requests for information to a suicide hotline.  We again recommend that all residents make themselves aware (at http://www.211palmbeach.org  ) of this valuable service and pass the information on to their friends and family.  We understand that the local 911 operators are also planning to actively publicize the service.

The real point of their visit was to look at the operation of our 911 system, associated administrative services, and evaluate s the efficiency of their operations.  While the system has seen a recent decline in the total number of calls, in 2008 the system handled nearly 275,000 individual incoming requests for service.  The system is helped to function efficiently by automatic location routing by the telephone company for landline phones.  These landline calls make up about 80% of all incoming calls.  Cell phone calls are received first by the Sheriff’s 911 operators without regard to location.  These currently account for about 20% of the total calls, but are a growing percentage of all calls.  These are rapidly transferred to the appropriate agency (if not appropriate for an MCSO response) based on location and type of service needed.  In the near future GPS cell phone technology will also make automatic routing of these calls possible.  There are a total of five different 911 call centers currently operating in Martin County.  The two largest call centers, the MC Sheriff’s and the MC Fire/Rescue are co-located in the same room at the County’s new Emergency Operations Center.  However, they differ in management, supervision, computer programs utilized, union representation, work rules and pay.  In addition, there are separate operations centers for the City of Stuart, Jupiter Island Township and a MC Sheriff’s satellite center in Indiantown.  There is also a “hot” (running but unmanned) back up location in the old emergency “bunker” located behind Martin Memorial’s South Hospital.  While we understand the desire to control the first response by the MC Sheriff, MC Fire/Rescue, and Cities’ Emergency Services (and their associated unions) duplicity almost always contributes to inefficiency.   There are instances where specialty training/qualifications are needed for 911 operators but, with declining revenues and an apparent decrease in the number of calls, more could be done to streamline the operation.  Consolidation in the EOC of the Sheriff’s Indiantown operation would be a start.  Another would be to allow more reliance on the County’s extensive Technology Services (Information Technology) Department to streamline the various 911 services. 

Unfortunately the current trend is to a further separation of the 911 systems.   Presently both the Stuart and MC Fire/Rescue units are dispatched from the EOC after transfer from the Stuart call center. This issue surfaced as a by-product of the aborted effort to integrate the Stuart and Martin County Fire Rescue Services earlier this year.  After failure of that effort Martin County attempted to recover the cost of the services their larger and better-equipped operation routinely furnishes the City.  For example, dispatch from the call center routinely results in both County and City resources over responding to many relatively minor emergency calls such as auto accidents on US-1 inside the City.   Also, the County has been providing Fire/Rescue services for the portion of the County north of the Roosevelt Bridge.  The City of Stuart is proceeding to build their own fire station north of the bridge and intend to commence with separately dispatching all of their Fire/Rescue calls. It appears that the City expects to save money by making sure that the MC Fire/Rescue does not respond unless specifically requested to dispatch their Fire/Rescue units.  This, in turn, will mean that the County (City?) will not be automatically billed for these services. 

In summary, the system functions well, but could certainly be improved through consolidation.  Next year the agreements under which the County provides Fire/Rescue service to Jupiter Island and Sewell’s Point will be up for renewal.  This would be an excellent time to revisit the possibility of merging into a Countywide Fire/Rescue service, as well as a consolidation to improve the efficiency of the 911 system.   A new State law that may prohibit the current practice of billing drivers and insurance companies for the efforts of “first responders” could well be catalyst for making these efficiencies.   While we are not yet sure of the impact of this legislation on County revenues, it could well be the precursor of a major hit to Fire/Rescue funding.