Committee recommends no change to dispatchers? step plan

The Personnel and Operations Committee of the Washington County Communications Commission met Monday in the former library to discuss the commission?s upcoming budget and the new 911 dispatch center.

The committee is composed of three of the commission?s six members: Bob Shepherd, representing the city of Washington; Ryan Miller from Wellman, representing the surrounding towns; and Adam Mangold, representing the county board of supervisors. The committee discussed the amount of the raise it should give to dispatchers. The committee recommended that the step plan, which gives employees automatic raises each year, should remain unchanged from the current 2011-2012 fiscal year.

Full-time dispatchers start at a wage of $13.61 per hour and receive an increase of 63 cents per hour for each year they work after that. Part-time employees also start at $13.61 per hour but their steps give them raises of 39 cents per year. After 10 years, the employees graduate from the step program and at that point their wages are determined by the communications commission. The commission recommended that employees who have graduated from the step plan be given a raise of 50 cents per hour for the upcoming fiscal year. Six of the 11 dispatchers have graduated from the step plan.

Washington County Communications Supervisor Cara Sorrells said she had not yet prepared the budget as of Monday evening, but will have it ready to present to the commission at its Jan. 23 meeting. She said the commission will review the budget at the time and then it will be published in The Journal. If all goes as planned, the commission will adopt its budget in February.

In other news, Shepherd recommended that the commission and the county sign an agreement that specifies how the dispatch center will be paid for and who will own it.

?We?re dealing with an agreement between organizations, and to make sure that we don?t have misunderstandings, we ought to write it down,? he said. ?We?re talking about spending money to improve property. You and I can talk together and 10 minutes later we might have two different ideas about what was said. If it?s written down, there can be no misunderstanding.?

Mangold replied, ?You?re concerned that somehow the county is going to pull out the rug from the communications commission??

Shepherd said, ?My concern is called good common practice.?

Mangold said that an additional agreement is not necessary because the 28E agreement between the county and the communications commission already specifies that the county shall provide the dispatch center.

Article II, Section 4 of the commission?s bylaws state, ?The Washington County Board of Supervisors will make available the Washington Communications Center.?

In a letter written by Washington County Attorney Larry Brock to Mangold in November 2011, Brock wrote that a memorandum of understanding between the two organizations is unnecessary ?although the Commission may wish to revise the Bylaws to make this provision clearer.? Brock made clear that he had written the letter to advise Mangold because he is a supervisor and was not advising the commission itself.

Miller said that the memorandum of understanding would be a good idea if the commission were expected to contribute to the construction or remodeling of a dispatch center.

?The first step would be for the supervisors to decide if they?re the ones who are going to make the improvements to the building,? Miller said.

?We?ve said on several occasions that wouldn?t be an issue,? Mangold said.

Shepherd said he got the impression the commission would be in charge of supplying the building when the commissioners talked about the need to have a reserve of funds months ago.

Mangold said the supervisors voted to provide the dispatch center. He said the commission would not be able to find a lending institution to loan it money because the commission has no taxing authority to pay it back. Mangold said he would find the minutes of the supervisors? meeting at which they approved supplying the dispatch center and bring them to the commission?s meeting Jan. 23.