They claim the county discriminated against them because they were pregnant and Channel 2 Action News has learned a federal agency agrees.

“We can’t help that this is the reason God put us here to be able to give birth and our jobs should not be put on the line,” Leeneeka Bell told Channel 2′s Lori Geary.

Que’ana Morris said she was also terminated and told Geary she was shocked when her supervisor said “Once you rectify your problem which is your pregnancy then you can come back.”

Both ladies were pregnant with complications during their training. Both said their pregnancies led to their firings.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission did a full investigation and after more than two years it agreed that Fulton County discriminated against the two women.

Letters show the findings from the federal agency.

“It was as if I had a voice when I couldn’t go directly to them to beg and to plead, ‘Hey this is going to happen.’ That voice came through the EEOC,” Morris said.

Both women said they not only lost their jobs but also their benefits, including health insurance, when they needed it most.

“I was worried about ‘How do I pay for pregnancy? How do I pay to deliver a baby?’ Nobody, no woman, should have to experience that,” Morris added.

The women said their firings sent a clear message to other women in their workplace.

“I think a lot of people got scared if they were thinking of becoming pregnant. The story was ‘Look what happened to the other two,’” Bell said,

Now, the two women plan to file suit against Fulton County. If they win, taxpayers will foot the bill.

“It’s unbelievable. The employer, a government agency, in this day and age, is going to make a woman choose between having a baby and having a job,” attorney Lisa Millican said.

Late Thursday afternoon, Geary received a statement from a Fulton County representative saying, “Fulton County is a progressive and inclusive employer that fully complies with relevant federal laws as well as our own internal policies and procedures. At no time did Fulton County take any prohibited action against the employees in question.”

Both women said they plan to file suit in the next few weeks.

Both ladies gave birth to healthy girls that are now 2 years old.

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Michael Armitage, the mayor pro-tem of Milan and a dispatcher for the University of Michigan Department of Public Safety, is one of 12 founding board members of the 911 Wellness Foundation. It is a national initiative, although the majority of the leadership is currently based in Michigan with a presence also in Florida.

Currently the foundation is waiting to be approved as a nonprofit, which is pending but could be approved as soon as sometime within the next 48 hours.

Armitage became involved after meeting Jim Marshall, foundation chairman and Petoskey resident. Those initially involved began throwing ideas around for the foundation in 2011, but Armitage said within the past several months it has really taken off the ground.

In late March, a research study was released that helped open discussion and presented evidence that dispatchers can face serious distress and PTSD, according to the 911 Wellness Foundation. The study was co-authored by Dr. Michelle Lilly and Heather Pierce, a member of the National Emergency Number Association working group on 911 stress.

The foundation’s goals are many fold, Armitage said. They hope to raise money to fund research for how work can affect the mental health of dispatchers. With the possible use of additional media elements such as callers able to communicate with dispatchers through video, he said there could be a big impact with dispatchers not only hearing crisis but seeing it too.

PTSD is not unique to dispatchers, he said, as it is something that can affect police officers, firefighters and military personnel. However, because dispatchers aren’t actually on the scene of incidents they respond to, he feels concern for their mental health can be overlooked.

“We really want to address this in an open, positive way,” Armitage said.

Mental health isn’t always something openly talked about, he said, because there can be a stigma to it. He said dispatchers may also be reluctant to seek help if needed.

Through the course of their work, Armitage said dispatchers can hear disturbing sounds like gunshots, children in distress, or even the last sounds of a person dying. Often dispatchers don’t get a chance for any type of closure to what they do, he said, they must from call to call.

The foundation supports dispatchers being a part of the debriefing for cases, not for every call, but especially for more serious incidents. Armitage said they also support making certain some resources like counseling are available to dispatchers as an industry standard.

Fortunately, he said progressive support with resources like counseling have widespread availability locally through the Washtenaw Community Public Health Department’s Critical Incident Stress Management team.

“Locally they’ve been very instrumental,” he said.

However, this isn’t the case in all agencies throughout the country. Armitage said there is a lot of variation between agencies, which also comes down to differences in funding availability, expertise and awareness.

The foundation is hoping to partner with national organizations like the National Emergency Number Association and the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials.

Once the organization has gotten past administrative issues like being granted nonprofit status, Armitage said they hope to start doing fundraising to be able to provide grants and fund research. The foundation is looking to partner with the Greater Milan Area Community Foundation to create an endowment fund, he said.

Read the story here.

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, PA — The Allegheny County 911 Communications Center is a well-oiled machine where emergency calls of all kinds are quickly answered, prioritized and assigned to the right people.

Edgewood Police Chief Robert Payne and Mayor Ed Cook visited the center Wednesday for a tour of the facility in an effort to explain to the public that dialing 911 should be the response for just about any emergency situation—large or small.

“If you don’t know what number to call—call 911,” said Rebecca Frazier, assistant communications manager at the center. “911 is the recognized universal number for emergencies.”

After a rash of recent car break-ins hit Edgewood streets, Payne and Cook are determined to prevent such widespread crimes from happening again by receiving more calls regarding suspicious activity in the future. If people see or hear something out of the ordinary and call 911, police can respond immediately. If they call Payne’s office number on a Friday, the message won’t be received for a day or more.

“When the chief gets calls on his voice mail, it does no good,” Cook said.

Whether it’s witnessing a fight between two people in a parking lot or hearing a loud noise, Payne doesn’t want people to hesitate in an age where there is no non-emergency number to call.

While addressing those concerns, Frazier’s answer to the problem was simple.

“The call will be processed,” she said. “We preach courtesy, compassion and understanding for every caller.”

Each call that comes into the 911 center, which is located in Point Breeze along with Allegheny County Police Headquarters, is first received by a call-taker, who is given a set of questions to ask and then answer through typing into a CAD computer program.

Their location is verified, along with other key bits of information needed before discussing the emergency itself.

The call is automatically tracked and mapped by the phone used, whether it’s a land line or a cell phone, and immediately sent to the computer screen of the dispatcher for the area. Those areas include North, South, East and the City of Pittsburgh. Each area of the Pittsburgh region has its own designated spot for dispatchers.

The dispatchers then connect with the correct emergency responders for the situation almost simultaneously as the call-takers continue to gather information to share.

911 Shift Commander Hank Caparelli said this weekend during the Pittsburgh Marathon, the center will be inundated with calls from residents trying to make it from one place to another.

“We’re here to help,” he said.

Those who work at the 911 center require a minimum of four months of training. Everyone involved in the call-taking process has the same software and computer program—which also gives everyone instructions that are read on how to do CPR. The center takes about 1.4 million calls a year and has 63 employees on duty at a time. About 250 people work at the 911 center, according to Frazier.

Payne and Cook are now discussing the possibility of organizing a town meeting in Edgewood with 911 dispatch commanders to discuss the issue as well.

Caparelli urged those are uncertain about making the call to do so whenever they are wondering if the emergency is severe enough.

“Another reason why we get away from the non-emergency number is because asking the public to differentiate between what is an emergency and what’s not an emergency isn’t fair,” he said. “So—just call.”

Read the story here.

It was one of the first 911 calls she answered, more than two decades ago as a police dispatcher.

An elderly woman reported a break-in.

“He was in the house with her,” Hiscoe recalled. “I was staying on the line with her while she was hiding.”

The frightened woman whispered the movements of the suspect as she anxiously waited for police to arrive.

The wait was endless.

“It seemed like it was forever and it was less than a minute,” Hiscoe said.

Just as the woman was frantically saying the suspect was closing in on her hiding place, the officers arrived.

That call has stuck with the Niagara Regional Police communications supervisor over the years.

All the dispatchers in the police communications centre have answered calls they will never forget. It comes with the job.

Wendy Goertz finds calls about child abuse, sexual assault and suicide the toughest.

When those difficult calls come in, the staff in the communications centre rely on each other for support.

“We talk to each other a lot,” Goertz said.

The mood in the call centre is often lighter than one would expect, she said.

“We are forever joking around.”

Levity helps balance out some of the tragedy they deal with every day, she said.

A call that has always stuck with Fran Groulx came in while she was training Goertz on dispatch on Nov. 8, 2004. A raging inferno at a West Lincoln farmhouse claimed the lives of eight members of the same family: pregnant Monika Woerlen, 39, and her children Susanna Ruth, 11, Elena Jane, 10, Marcus Simon, 8, Samuel Benjamin, 7, Paul Anthony, 5, Nathan Matthew, 3, and 18-month-old Debora Lynne. The blaze widowed Monika’s husband, Marc, who was in Ottawa when the fire broke out.

“It was such a sad situation,” Groulx recalls. “It could happen to anyone.”

Hiscoe said the shift of operators and dispatchers can vary wildly. One minute they take a call about a horrific accident and the next they could be talking to someone reporting the theft of Christmas lights.

“They are all important to us,” she said.

Those who work in the communications centre rotate jobs — one day they work as operators, another as dispatchers.

Goertz was on dispatch duty last week, sitting in front of four large computer screens, her foot on a pedal that controls the headset she uses to talk with frontline officers.

Her fingers whizzed over the keyboard as she took a call about a theft from a vehicle.

The call came in Friday at 12:01 p.m., after a resident spotted someone stealing out of a parked vehicle.

The suspect took off and officers were dispatched to the area. A man was in custody by 12:06 p.m.

During that time, Goertz talked to the complainant, dispatched officers and the K-9 unit to the area, mapped the call on a computer connected to the frontline and ran a background check on the suspect.

Hiscoe scoffs at the idea that there’s no such thing as multi-tasking.

She said the job of a police communicator is to be a multi-tasker.

“It can be a very stressful job,” she said. “No one really calls in to tell us they are having a good day.”

On busy days, dispatchers could have many calls in the queue. It’s up to them to prioritize the calls.

Being able to help people in their time of need is what makes the job so rewarding, Groulx said.

“Every day is different, you never know what kind of calls will come in,” she said.

Acting Insp. Paul Rogers said while there’s no predicting the type of calls, they do see an increased call volume during the summer months, long weekends and when there’s a full moon.

“We have no idea why, but it does happen — there are spikes during a full moon,” he said.

In 2011, dispatchers took 118,657 calls that were handled by police. So far this year, they’ve taken 32,175.

He said those numbers don’t include the thousands of calls operators take that don’t require police assistance.

Read the story here.

“Being a dispatcher is 99 percent boredom, one percent sheer hell,” said Julie Senst, a dispatcher for the county for the past 22 years.

According to jail administrative officer Jim Hildebrandt, the county dispatcher stays in touch with 14 fire departments, five police departments, five ambulance crews, and seven first responder crews.

“The dispatchers are kind of forgotten about sometimes,” Hanson said. “Many times people will call 911 and see the police or fire department show up, but it’s the dispatcher who made it happen.

“They call the appropriate crews, and do some of the organizing for every emergency call.”

“In an emergency, the dispatcher has to make a lot of split-second decisions about who has to get there first,” said Hildebrandt.

“For example, if there’s an accident near Clements, the dispatcher has to contact the Clements first responders, and the Morgan fire department.”

Once a crew has arrived at the accident scene, someone there — usually the fire chief — makes the main decisions from there.

“Sometimes with 911 calls, the people calling in can be pretty hysterical,” said Hanson. “The dispatchers still need to get the information and keep the caller calm, and stay calm themselves.”

“We’ve had a lot of people come in here and not be able to handle the job,” said Hildebrandt. “You have to really be able to multi-task.”

The dispatcher’s office can take up to eight 911 calls at one time.

And no matter how busy the scene gets, every call must be answered.

“With everyone having cell phones now, if there’s an auto accident, we might get 10 or 20 people call it in,” said Hildebrandt.

“And every call has to be answered, because how do you know one of them not be about someone having a heart attack?”

“You might be dealing with a fire and a heart attack, and someone calls in right then to see if they can get a burn permit,” said Senst.

“We’ve had people call 911 to report a dead deer in their yard, or to ask what the phone number is for the Minneapolis police department.

“We get calls for things you wouldn’t think about, like getting calls in the middle of the night to place people in nursing homes.”

911 is often the first telephone number a child learns these days. Dispatchers have to deal with kids calling in just to say hi.

“If the kids hang up we’ll call back or send an officer out,” said Hanson.

There’s no formal training for dispatchers; other than passing a test to use the state computer system, they have to learn on the job.

“It’s hard to explain the job to anyone,” said Senst. “You could train them for six months, then on their first day someone would call in an emergency they’re not trained for.

“It’s difficult dealing with it when it’s someone you know,” Senst said, “but I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t enjoy it and the people here.”

The county has four full-time dispatchers, and four part-timers who double as custody officers (“jailers”).

“There’s always someone here 24/7 to take 911 calls,” emphasized Hanson. “In this county, you can always call 911 and get a real person on the other end of the line.”

“In larger departments, the tasks can be more specialized. Here, dispatchers have to know everything. They have to know everyone’s jobs,” said Hanson.

The dispatcher’s other duties include running drivers license  and licence plate checks called in from officers on the road, criminal history checks  and warrants.

Dispatchers also handle weather alarms throughout the county. If a warning comes from the National Weather Service, or if a weather spotter sees a tornado touch down, it’s the county dispatcher who sets off the sirens.

The dispatchers also have a screen showing 16 views of the jail and the area surrounding the law enforcement center.

The dispatcher’s office has its own bathroom so he or she can be at the phones within seconds.

“You’re married to the job when you’re here. We eat a lot of our food cold,” said Senst.

Read the story here.

The operator has been put on leave while an investigation into the shooting is completed.

Family told 7NEWS the victim is Jimma Reat, a refugee from Sudan.

Police say Reat was driving with three other people early Sunday morning when people in a red Jeep began throwing bottles and debris as their car, breaking a window.

The operator who took the call told the victims to return to Denver and wait for officers to arrive, said Denver Police Spokeswoman Raquel Lopez.

Ran Pal, Reat’s cousin, said he was driving the car and was the one who called 911.

“I told them I don’t really want to go back on that side because that’s where everything happened,” said Pal. “I said ‘I’m here at home this is where I feel safe so please send somebody.’ He said, ‘No. If you don’t go back that way, we won’t be able to send anybody, and it’s going to be your loss we won’t be able to file a police report.”

Ral said he gave in and drove in the direction police told him.

The car, with four people inside, returned to West 29th Avenue and Sheridan Boulevard and stopped to wait for police.

As the people were standing outside the parked car, the red Jeep, carrying about four men, drove by and opened fire on them, shooting Reat in the back, police said.

The Jeep then sped away from the scene.Reat was taken to Denver Health Medical Center where he died shortly after 5 a.m., Capt. Ron Saunier said.

Monday, 911 Executive Director Carl Simpson apologized, saying, “We are deeply saddened about the events that transpired.”

Simpson said the dispatcher should have worked with Wheat Ridge police and have them meet Reat.

“The call transpired very quickly and it just got sideways very quickly and I will tell you we didn’t do our best work that night,” Simpson said.

In violent incidents people typically are not asked to return to the Denver area, because police can travel to meet them outside the city, said Ernie Franssen, the Denver 911 operations manager.

Communications officials are reviewing recordings of the 911 calls to determine why dispatchers asked the victims to come back into Denver, Franssen said. He said they want to make sure department policies and procedures were followed.

“We’re absolutely apologetic for the circumstances of the call,” said Franssen. “We want to give due diligence to the employee and make sure that we did or didn’t follow the policies as they are written, and we want to take a look and listen to it ourselves and be able to speak to the employee.”

Read the story here.

Police dispatchers wracked up 10,024 hours of overtime in January and February, at a cost of $516,642, compared to 5,247 hours with a $247,662 price tag during the same period a year ago, records show.

Fire dispatchers piled up 3,504 overtime hours at a cost of $220,653 during the two-month period, versus 1,521 hours and $96,366 a year ago.

The alarming increases — which came as the number of calls went up by 13.2 percent, or 108,000 calls — are outlined in a March 15 email to 911 center department heads from James Carroll, finance director for the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

“Please respond by March 20 with the reason for the overtime, as well as a plan to reduce your section’s overtime,” Carroll wrote. “Hiring new employees is not an option.”

The Emanuel administration blamed much of the overtime surge on an agreement with city unions that expired on June 30, 2011 and substituted cash overtime for compensatory time. “The overtime payments this year are consistent with what we paid in previous years when the [union agreement] was not in effect,” OEMC spokesperson Delores Robinson wrote in an email to the Sun-Times.

During City Council budget hearings last fall, Gary Schenkel, executive director of OEMC, argued it made more sense to build in $3.2 million in annual overtime — roughly $8,000 per employee — than to hire more dispatchers, which would cost $120,000 a year per employee for salary and benefits.

“We have historical data that will allow us to schedule to the peak periods and peak times that historically we get a greater call volume,” Schenkel said then, predicting that operators would continue to be able to answer most 911 calls within three rings.

“It’s almost like a bell curve as to when it starts to escalate and when it starts to drop off. As you hit the summer months, that bell curve starts going up. Then, as we hit the cooler weather after the holidays and the festivals, we start ramping down.”

A fire dispatcher, who spoke on the condition anonymity, said the overtime surge in January and February make clear that $3.2 million won’t be nearly enough to cover a year of overtime.

“It’s definitely gonna be a long year — not just the NATO summit but other things that are coming down the road,” the dispatcher said. “There’s been some mistakes made in the accounting for how many people we need at the 911 center.”

The fire dispatcher argued that the demotion of three supervisors has some people working around the clock.

“It’s a tough enough job,” the dispatcher said. “Now, they’re saying, ‘I need you to work your two days off.’ It’s a wear and tear on these guys. You can see it.”

Understaffing has been a chronic problem at the 911 center over the years. As a result, a handful of call-takers have been able to more than double their salaries in overtime.

Emanuel’s original plan called for eliminating the jobs of 17 fire dispatchers, laying off nine others and shrinking supervisory ranks from 13 to eight. After union negotiations, the mayor ended up eliminating 10 dispatcher vacancies, demoting three supervisors and one dispatcher and laying off one call-taker.

Also, the jobs of 45 police dispatchers were eliminated, and so were four of 22 radio repair technicians.

Earlier this month, the Chicago Police Department pointed to faster response times to 911 calls as proof that the department’s strategy of putting more officers in patrol cars is working.

But the winning streak came to a crashing halt on an unseasonably mild St. Patrick’s Day, when bars and the city’s annual downtown parade drew huge crowds downtown and to River North. Sources said 911 dispatchers were so inundated between 10 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday that only 18 percent of the calls received during that time were answered within two to three rings.

That’s one of the lowest percentages in the 17 years since the $217 million 911 center opened on the West Side.

Read the story here.

The experienced dispatcher, an Oxford resident, remained calm Saturday morning when a man called to say his wife was giving birth in the backseat while they were heading to the hospital.

“I’m in my car. My wife is having the baby in the car right now,” Craig Coyle said about 12:30 a.m. Saturday while driving in Methuen. “The baby is out; her head is out right now.

The (amniotic) sac isn’t broken.”

“If the sac is not broken, you need to open the sac around the mouth of the baby,” Mr. Peloso said. “Is the sac still covering the baby’s mouth? Just lightly open it.”

Mr. Peloso, 29, kept Mr. Coyle calm with specific directions. The couple’s package was special: Mr. Coyle’s wife, Kelly-Beth Coyle, was a surrogate for another New Hampshire couple waiting for the baby girl they had named Madeleine Grace.

“It worked,” Mr. Coyle exclaimed on the recording of the call. “She’s crying.”

“The crying is good,” said Mr. Peloso, who is also an EMT. He previously worked in communications for the Boston Police and Connecticut State Police.

Today Mr. Peloso looked over at the baby at state police headquarters in Framingham. The Coyles and the child’s biological parents, Maricar Tarun and David Dube of Plaistow, N.H., all gathered to talk about Saturday’s events.

“It’s great. It’s amazing. I am at a loss for words really,” Mr. Peloso said. “I was waiting to hear the crying. That was the most important part.”

When baby Madeleine gave Mrs. Coyle the sign she was ready to come out, the couple started driving from their Manchester, N.H. home to the hospital in Methuen where they had planned to deliver they baby. It was snowing, and driving was tough, but Mr. Coyle was trying hard to get his wife to the emergency room.

Madeleine had other plans.

“We thought he left in plenty of time,” Mrs. Coyle said. “Apparently not, she decided she wanted out right then and there. Before I knew it I was yelling for Craig to stop.”

That’s when Mr. Coyle called 911 and spoke to Mr. Peloso. Together the two talked through the steps to make sure Madeleine was fine. The baby was wrapped.

Soon after, Mrs. Coyle called Ms. Tarun and Mr. Dube to give them the news. Ms. Tarun had had a dream the baby wouldn’t make it to the hospital for delivery. She was right.

“We had a nice birth plan, which we didn’t use, because obviously she had other plans,” Ms. Tarun said, her husband rocking Madeleine in a car seat. “There were tears in my eyes, of course. This is real; she is here.”

The two couples had met through a mutual friend. Ms. Tarun and Mr. Dube were looking for a surrogate. Their friend put up a post on Facebook, and the Coyles answered.

After a couple of years of talking and maneuvering through paperwork, the process started. One thing none of them anticipated was a birth in the backseat of a Nissan.

“We found a full-service surrogate right here in Kelly,” Mr. Dube said, smiling as he cracked a joke. “She not only baked, but she delivers.”

The two couples repeatedly thanked Mr. Peloso for his calm and simple directions. He even called back Mr. Coyle during the incident when the phone was lost.

“Our dispatchers here at headquarters answer over 1 million and a half calls a year,” said Col. Marian J. McGovern, superintendent of the state police. “They never know what’s on the other end of that phone, but they know it’s someone that needs their help.”

Mr. Peloso watched this afternoon as his soon-to-be stepson, Nathan, cruised around the gymnasium at headquarters. This evening, Mr. Peloso will marry his fiancée, Erin Salvas, in a small ceremony in Charlton.

Before Madeleine left, he handed her a pink state police one-piece outfit.

When asked his title, Mr. Peloso looked over at his supervisors. He wondered if he was still a trainee now.

“Is that over?” he joked.

Read the story here.

Agencies are hiring bilingual police, fire and ambulance dispatchers, paying for a translation service and transferring calls to on-duty police officers who can interpret.

Although the evidence of the increase is purely anecdotal, Galveston County saw a 4 percent increase in the Hispanic population since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Dispatchers countywide answered about 200,000 emergency calls last year, but there are no statistics readily available to easily identify how many callers spoke only Spanish.

“When I started in law enforcement 25 years ago, Spanish-only was not real common,” said Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo, communication supervisor of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office. “Over that period of time, has it increased? To be sure it has. It’s been ever increasing with the change of demographics of our entire county.”

The sheriff’s office staffs two night-shift dispatchers fluent in Spanish. They alternate shifts, but in their absence, there’s usually a jailer on staff who can interpret for dispatchers, Tuttoilmondo said.

When dispatchers in the cities of League City and Dickinson can’t understand where to send help, they connect the caller to a service called Language Line.

League City uses the service when its three Spanish-speaking dispatchers aren’t available, said Kim Hera, the city’s communication manager.

Of the roughly 36,000 calls that came into the center last year, 75 were sent to the interpreting service, Hera said.

“It’s faster to get service through the Language Line,” Hera said. “During the day, we have several people who speak Spanish to call a translator in.”

The city of Dickinson also uses the Language Line, at 68 cents per minute, on a weekly basis. Most of the Spanish-only calls come in after hours, but a records clerk interprets daytime calls, Vernita Rawls, the city’s communication supervisor, said.

And in Galveston, dispatchers at times transfer Spanish-only speakers to the cellphones of officers who can interpret while on duty, Galveston police Sgt. Ken Weems said.

“Unfortunately, bilingual dispatchers are in short supply right now,” Weems said. “Currently, we’re going through the hiring process to try to obtain them.”

Read the story here.

At a budget hearing before the House Appropriations Committee, Glenn Cannon said there are a number of problems with the way the state funds its emergency call centers, resulting in a water-falling deficit as county requests for funding continue to exceed what the state can afford.

Everything’s being funded at the state’s 911 centers, said Cannon, but counties are asking for proverbial Cadillacs when they only need Fords – and he suspects they’re using the money on unrelated things.

“People have learned how to game the system to maximize the revenue they need,” he said.  “We’ve built out the whole system and we’re spending more money than ever.  And the purpose of the money was to build out the system.  So where’s all that money going?”

To pay for equipment, and data, as well as operational costs, said Doug Hill, head of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania.

Hill contends the system isn’t fully built out, and still needs investments if the call centers are going to keep up with advancing technology.

“Now we are getting people who are contacting 911 wanting to send video,” said Hill.  “We’ve had calls come in by text message.  We even dispatched one call based on an alert coming in over Facebook.”

Hill added that counties may have gotten all the funding they requested in years past, but more recently, the state has been negotiating.

“I don’t believe that it’s a pure ask and an automatic grant,” he said.  Counties do audits with the state to ensure the spending is in keeping with state guidelines, said Hill.  He allowed that there are ways to cut costs further, but also said the statewide fee that helps fund the system is inadequate to cover the rising costs of the emergency call center system.

PEMA’s director is opposed to increasing that fee.

Each county has one emergency call center, and Bethlehem and Allentown have one a piece as well.

Read the story here.