York Town News
Plans moving forward for regional dispatch center in York
By Jennifer L. Saunders
YORK BEACH - In just about one year's time, the York Police Department will be providing emergency dispatch services for a number of towns throughout southern York County.And the York Police Department has been at work with other area emergency service providers to make that plan a reality.
York Police Chief Douglas Bracy and Lt. Robert Scamman have been instrumental in bringing forward the proposal, working at the local and county level to devise a plan to best meet York's needs while addressing the state mandate. Earlier this year, the Board of Selectmen gave its nod to a preliminary plan to provide a regional Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) at the York Police Department.
That decision came to fruition after an extensive effort to research a mandate from Augusta to reduce the number of 911 answering points across the state.
In a recent interview, Bracy said plans continue to move forward toward meeting the October 2007 consolidation deadline set by the state.
Both Bracy and Scamman have repeatedly described the difference between a PSAP and a regional dispatch center. A PSAP takes an emergency call and relays it to the appropriate agency whereas a dispatch center actually dispatches the emergency personnel directly from the intake site.
"It made sense for us to talk about this on a county-wide basis," Scamman said when the plan was brought before the Board of Selectmen earlier this year. "We are 100 percent behind regionalizing. We think it makes sense for a lot of reasons."
In York's case, Bracy explained, the PSAP would also serve as the town's dispatch center.
"We're going to work on from there to see if and when the police department is built, we might consider a regional dispatch center," Bracy said of ongoing efforts to build a new York Police Department to replace the outdated and undersized facility currently used by the department.
Several southern York County towns, including Berwick, South Berwick, Kittery, Eliot and Ogunquit, have indicated they want to share a PSAP managed through the town of York.
"It's the only reasonable thing for us to at least keep it as small as we can," Bracy said. "All of us are working toward the same computer platforms and equipment."
Bracy said the York Police Department and the towns planning to share a regional PSAP will begin working on the implementation of the plan in the weeks ahead.
"We share a lot of similarities and likenesses," Bracy said of the communities in question, adding the municipalities are already used to sharing information and working together with such standing arrangements as mutual aid agreements for response to emergency situations.
The plan marks the most recent step in a discussion that began about four years ago with the state's mandate to cut the number of PSAPs in Maine from 48 to no more than 26.
