Walpole PD Involved in Feasibility Study for Regional Dispatch Center

FOXBOROUGH-Foxborough Town Manager Kevin Paicos shared some good news at last week’s Board of Selectmen meeting when he announced the town received a $100,000 Regional Public Safety Dispatcher grant from the E911 Department to fund a feasibility study to see whether a regional dispatch center for Foxborough, Walpole, Medfield and possible Norwood would work for the communities involved.

“This is about as major league a grant as you can get,” Paicos said. “It was based on the strength of the initiative and [Foxborough Police Chief Edward O’Leary’s] outstanding work that he put in on the grant application.”

Paicos congratulated O’Leary on receiving the grant and said he thinks “this is the start of something very big for the town.”

O’Leary said the grant money will give the three communities interested in a regional dispatch center an opportunity to make an “objective assessment as to whether regionalization would fit in” Foxborough, serving the communities of Walpole and Medfield.

O’Leary said representatives from each town met a “couple of months ago” to discuss the possibility of regionalization and there was agreement at that meeting to proceed with requesting a study.

“Chief [Richard] Stillman from Walpole contacted me and then joined with Chief [Robert] Meaney from Medfield, who had contacted him about regionalization ... so I’m hoping the RFP consultant can come in and make an objective assessment as to the benefits for all three of our communities,” O’Leary said. 

The shared interest between O’Leary, Stillman and Meaney led to Foxborough filing a grant application with E911, according to Paicos.

“Based on the enthusiasm of looking into [the possibility of regionalization], [O’Leary] wrote a grant to the E911 program,” Paicos said. … “He wrote the grant application in about three days so congrats to the chief for getting the grant.”

Stillman said he is pleased to be taking steps toward possibly improving emergency communications in town.

"We hope it would improve each town's ability to handle multiple calls since there would be four or five dispatchers on at all times. It will probably save money and improve the overall professionalism of dispatchers," Stillman said.

Stillman said he believes a Regional Emergency Communications Center (RECC) would help communication efforts between the towns.

"Part of the feasibility study deals with the location of the RECC. At this point no one knows where it might be housed. However, the towns that give up dispatch have to decide what level of service they want at their now “closed” dispatch centers. In some areas they use a video screen to communicate between customers at a “closed” dispatch center and the RECC. Some have opted to hire “receptionists” at least during business hours to deal with their customers.  These will be the kinds of issues and questions we want answered by the vendor hired to conduct the feasibility study," Stillman said.

One drawback, however, Stillman said, could be the loss of the personal knowledge of each individual town among dispatchers.

Meaney said he was pleased with the news of Foxborough receiving the grant money from E911 to fund the study and described dispatching as a “critical function” of any public safety agency.

Meaney points out that a regional dispatch center would provide at least two dispatchers, which would be a welcomed improvement to Medfield's one.

The next step in this process, according to Paicos, will be to hire a consultant “in the near future” and begin the feasibility study.

As for a preliminary timeline for the project, Paicos said he hopes the town hires a consultant by the end of the summer to get the feasibility study underway. The study will then be done over “the next nine months” and an application for a construction grant would hopefully be filed in the spring of next year, according to Paicos.

“[We would] hopefully start thinking about physically constructing [a regional dispatch center] in the latter part of 2013 or early 2014 [with the goal] to have it up and running in 2014-2015,” he said.

“It will actually move along pretty quickly and that’s the way these people like these things to go,” Paicos said.

Regionalization Could Include Norwood

O’Leary added that during early conversations about regionalization with Walpole and Medfield, Norwood had expressed interest but was not included in the grant application.

“Originally, Norwood came to the meeting but they were going through some revamping,” O’Leary said.

That doesn’t mean O’Leary is opposed to having Norwood join Walpole and Medfield in regionalization with Foxborough.

“I’m not discounting having Norwood join us, that isn’t the case and I haven’t had the chance to talk with E911 about the process for filing the RFP,” O’Leary said.

Where the Grant Money Comes From

Paicos said the E911 money that was awarded to Foxborough is received through cell phone calls made in the state each year.

“Believe it or not, a little piece of every cell phone call made in the state goes into [the E911] fund and it’s used to pay for regional dispatch initiatives and we actually get some training money into it,” Paicos said.