Officers question plan to consolidate 9-1-1 centers

Sparta - Officials from two of the area’s largest police forces took aim at comments made by Eskil Danielson, Sussex County Emergency Management coordinator, regarding the consolidation of 9-1-1 centers. Sparta Police Chief Ernest Reigstad and Lieutenant Mark Zappa of the Newton Police Department, labeled Danielson’s comments “misleading,” and said their departments were not considering joining the efforts to centralize the emergency call centers under a county leadership. In an interview with this newspaper last week, Danielson said most police departments in the county had joined a study, funded by the state, to look into consolidating the county’s call centers. “Twenty out of 24 municipalities in Sussex County asked to participate in the state’s push to consolidate,” said Danielson last week. He acknowledged that four municipalities, which have their own call centers - Sparta, Newton, Hardyston, and Vernon - were initially reluctant to join the study, but had later changed their position. Rebuffing Danielson’s remarks, Sparta Chief Reigstad said that, in his estimate, most independent call centers in the county “have no interest in this happening.” He explained, as did Newton’s Zappa in a separate interview, that his department only cooperated with the company doing the study as a courtesy, and not as an endorsement of the plan. “What we said was that we would participate in the study to try to find out if there are other ways to operate the current PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points) in cooperation,” said Reigstad, who labeled the current system of independent stations as “efficient.” Reigstad explained that Sparta’s opposition is based on concerns that it would affect the quality of service offered to the township’s residents, because it would transfer the dispatchers from Sparta to a remote location. He said he believes such a move would remove the residents’ easy access to their police department. In a separate interview, Zappa corroborated Reigstad’s belief. “The quality definitely would suffer,” said Zappa, who spoke for Newton Police Chief John Tomasula, who was on vacation. “The only reason we participated was as a favor to the county, to help the company (doing the survey).” Reigstad explained his department previously considered consolidating operations with Hopatcong, but, he said, the idea was abandoned because of the “customer service aspect.” Both officials said their respective departments have, in the past two years, spent thousands of dollars to upgrade their systems, which would go to waste if consolidation were to happen. “All of these places have brand new systems. Why would we abandon brand new equipment? It doesn’t make sense. It may make sense 10 years from now,” said the chief. “We recently spent thousands of dollars updating our whole system and putting in a third station with a grant from the state. By no means are we endorsing a county-wide dispatch,” said Zappa. According to Reigstad, the seven regional call centers in the county already cooperate to ensure complete and prompt coverage of any emergency. Reigstad explained that once one of the centers is overwhelmed with emergency calls, the system automatically reroutes all new calls to the nearest center available. In addition, the Sparta chief explained, because the centers use the same type of equipment and software, the departments have been looking to directly connect all their systems together for better coordination in the future. “We could link the present service to share work electronically. You don’t all have to be in the same room, in the same building, to be able to have a county system,” said Reigstad. “We are already interlinked that way. What we would like to do in the future is interlink our computers. That’s the goal down the road,” said Zappa. “We use the same software, so that’s a real possibility. The technology is there, all we need to do is activate it.” Both officials emphasized that their departments do not oppose the efforts promoted by the state for municipalities to start looking for ways to share services as a way to reduce taxes. However, Reigstad explained, the current arrangement of regional stations is more efficient than consolidating the system. “There was a study done six months ago by Rutgers that found out that the system we have in place is the most economical for Sussex County,” said the chief. “(The study) indicated that at the present time, it would not be economically viable to change from the current system.”