Sussex closing in on enhanced 911

Funding answers to be addressed by consultant Vernon — Children everywhere are trained to call 911 in an emergency. But what if you could text them instead? This is a goal of a new, enhanced county 911 system that was presented to the Vernon Township Council at Thursday night’s meeting. John Drake, Keith Armstrong and John Eskilson, the Sussex County Emergency Management Administrator, came to lay out what the future holds. “If you witness a murder and video tape it on your cell phone,” said Drake. “Wouldn’t it be right if you could just send that to the police and then they could catch the killer a few minutes later? That’s the way this technology is going.” And Sussex County doesn’t want to be left behind. A workgroup comprised of local emergency management officials, firemen, police officials and EMS officials was set up to examine the 911 centers — Public Safety Answering Points, called PSAPs — in the county and find the most effective way to streamline and update the system. What they found is that there are six centers, each with two stations, working 24-7 throughout the county. In order to upgrade these centers to be able to work with current technologies, including advanced cell functions and or voice-over-IP-phone service (VOIP), each town would have to spend approximately $1 million for upgrades, not to mention extra training costs. But would a county-wide system be more cost-effective? To help them figure it out, the workgroup used state grant money to bring in L. Robert Kimball and Associates of Trenton, an engineering and consulting firm that specializes in working on emergency management planning. Their report should be complete by the end of the month. Their report should help to answer financial questions, the issue that derailed the 911 upgrade previously, according to Eskilson. Where is the money going to come from? According to Eskilson’s research, many areas are rolling the 911 service into the county tax base, simply because it’s too hard to use any other formula. “It’s important to note that 23 out of 24 towns in the county sent letters asking for this. It’s the direction that the country is going,” he said. “This technology is so important to this type of town,” said Mayor Austin Carew. “In an emergency, minutes are critically important. This town is so remote. It can take 30 minutes to get to a hospital from here.” Police Chief Roy Wherry isn’t 100% on board though. “I was a very big proponent. But I still think that the people of Vernon would be best served by having a PSAP here. But it has become a matter of dollars and cents.” Wherry sees downsides to a county 911 system-including the fact that the lobby of the police department probably wouldn’t be staffed 24/7 anymore which might lead to a decline in service to residents who walk in during off hours. He will support it though, with conditions. He would like to see the system totally funded by the county and would like to make sure that police, fire and medical officials from around the area have full input in the design of the new system. “It’s coming whether we want it or not, so we wanted to get our input in on the ground level,” he said.