Dispatch center may move to Orchard Hill

    The E911 Services Board and Communications Commission are exploring the possibility of building a new communications center adjacent to the county jail at Orchard Hill. That was the matter that was discussed at the two boards? joint meeting Thursday night in Washington.

    Leonard Koehnen, a consulting engineer out of St. Paul, Minn., said there are advantages to building a dispatch center alongside the jail. Koehnen said the two buildings would share the west wall of the jail and that the dispatch center would have easy access to fiber optic cables. However, Koehnen said one of the downsides to moving the dispatch center from 221 W. Second St., where it is now, to Orchard Hill is that it would be inconvenient for public access.

    Koehnen said most dispatch centers built in the last decade are telephone service only, meaning no walk-ups. He added that it?s unlikely that walk-up service will be continued if the communications center is moved to Orchard Hill.

    ?The trend in centers today is toward no interface with the public,? said Koehnen. ?If there is a walk-up, it will be a phone on the wall outside but the dispatcher may be in Timbuktu.?

    Commission Chairman Bob Shepherd said that he would like to see the walk-up service live on in Washington.

    ?I do think it?s important for us to consider the demographics of Washington County,? said Shepherd. ?We have a lot of seniors in this county, and they?re accustomed to talking to people face-to-face.?   

    Koehnen gave a Power Point presentation to the boards about moving the communications center to a vacant building at Orchard Hill, known as Building 1, which was once used as a nursing home. Koehnen said that the communications center would occupy roughly one-third of the building and would leave the other sections available for other entities.

For the full article, see the Dec. 4 edition of the Washington Evening Journal.