Brentwood mayor Pat Kelly, at his monthly coffee at city hall on Friday, spoke to about 20 residents about the decision facing the board of aldermen whether to accept a proposal from the East Central Dispatch Center (ECDC) to take over police, fire and ambulance dispatch services from the city’s own dispatch center.
Residents received a post card on Thursday opposing it; Kelly said he didn’t get one.
He said he’s opposed to using the word, “outsourcing” being used to describe the ECDC taking over Brentwood’s dispatch service.
“It’s not outsourcing, it would be joining nearby communities on a community-wide dispatch center,” he said.
Kelly said the city has until the end of February to decide to accept funds to upgrade its own dispatch center radio system. The funds come from the voter-approved system upgrade that includes the entire St. Louis County.
“What’s best for the community now and in the long run?” Kelly said. “This is the evaluation that the board of aldermen is going through.”
He said after the ECDC gave Brentwood a proposal in November the Brentwood police and fire chiefs met with neighboring chiefs. City officials toured the central dispatch center during Christmas week.
“If we make a change, will it be better for the community?” Kelly said. “Is there going to be a savings? Absolutely. At the end of the day, (the city) wants the best dispatch today and in the future.”
The board of aldermen will meet with ECDC representatives in a second closed meeting, scheduled before the Monday board of aldermen meeting. Kelly said he will ask the ECDC to explain the proposal in the open meeting following the closed session.
The gold nugget take-away you provided over this issue is– WHAT’S IN IT FOR THE MAYOR.? If it’s up to him, there will be something–and no one will know about it until the money or the beach tickets are secured by him. No confidence vote on the mayor. or his procedurally slick, self-serving style of operations.
Let’s face it folks… The Mayor does not have the safety of the citizens in mind. What he wants to do is make his buddy the Fire Chief and his wife’s best friend, the Fire Chief’s wife – happy. Smoke and mirrors folks. This is another personal agenda for the great, magnificent Pat Kelly. Gosh, maybe he should get a vote of no confidence and be ousted? THIS DISPATCH UPGRADE ISN’T GOING TO COST THE CITY A DIME. Pat Kelly should pay attention to the citizens instead of his buddies! Wake up and smell the rat that runs your city! ECDC is not a great move for Brentwood, they are too busy and understaffed as it is. Wait till you get put on indefinite hold and told your street is not in their jurisdiction… It happens folks. It won’t be the personal service you are used to.
“It’s common knowledge in the first responder community that ECDC’s services leave a lot to be desired”-no truer words have been spoken. I’m a police officer for one of the departments dispatched by ECDC. Those people are already too busy, our service suffers on a daily basis. There are already too many officers on the radio channels (road officers, conveyance units, traffic units, special assignment units). We are told on a regular basis to “stand by” and at times aren’t answered at all. You can hear the phones ringing non-stop everyday.
When we heard that Brentwood would possibly be joining ECDC I started scanning Brentwood’s channel and was highly impressed by their professionalism. The dispatchers sounded calm, cool and collected unlike the ECDC dispatchers who constantly sound frazzled. I don’t mean for this to be a personal attack on the ECDC dispatchers (there are a few that know what they are doing), I just feel Brentwood should hear an officer’s point of view. We have a hard enough time getting on the radio, adding Brentwood and Rock Hill will make an already crowded radio channel even worse.
Brentwood should also be warned if they plan on housing prisoners at Richmond Heights. Most of the time the cells are full therefore we have to release on a summons or take the prisoner to County which takes an officer off the street for hours at a time. We were originally told a conveyance officer would come to our location to pick up the prisoner and handle the booking process, that rarely happens. Paperwork gets “lost” all the time.
My advice to Brentwood is this– you will eventually regret this decision. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Hey Officer friendly, I’m man enough to use my real name, why can’t you? If you are a member, give me a call.
Hey Kurt, we need your picture and ss # as well. Please respond to the Brentwood campaign manager Jamboretz.
I’m sorry I have missed the reason the Mayor is proposing this change —- can anyone provide the reason for this sudden interest? What would be the cost to join the central dispatching unit, and what would be the savings to the city if the current dispatchers were eliminated from payroll?
And, what is in this for the Mayor??? – Yeah, I asked it!
He’s successfully reset the anger directed against him from the Jamboretz debacle and other missteps over the past 18 months by dilly dallying with the Dispatcher non-issue and the laughable “Code of Conduct.” This code of conduct is a real laugh riot, a solution looking for a problem.
Read between the lines folks, this Code of Conduct is how Brentwood ended up where it ended up. The real “power” in the mayors office is his ability to, on a whim, simply decide something needs to be changed or added to the code. He then literally rights it down, has the city attorney and manager drill down on it and create a agenda item and submit it to the board for a vote. Who on the board cosponsored this code of conduct, anyone?
OK Brentwood is this what you had in mind when you cast your ballot for Kelly? The power to simply write law and ram it through to a legal code that we all have to live with? Pretty scary thought….Kelly running around city hall looking for problems to solve and writing law.
So it’s better to be dispatched by individuals that are not familiar with Brentwood residents that may have ailments or conditions that require frequent ambulance use or individuals that are not familiar with our police and fire personnal and their mannerisms and/or radio habits. Right now Brentwood is fortunate enough to have such dispatchers that do know, and are familiar with our residents who need ambulance service frequently as well as being familiar with our police and fire personnal and can hear if there is distress in their voice indicating something may be going wrong on a call or during an arrest. At the last board meeting the mayor said “this is not about money”….hmmm, or is it? Could it be that St. Louis County ECC (Emergency Communication Commission) is reluctant to fund 911 communication updates to the Brentwood Dispatch Center even though those funds were secured when Proposition E-911 was passed in November 2009? Prop E-911 was a sales tax increase that raised $13.6 million dollars per year to finance the creation of an $80 million dollar, county-wide emergency communication system for ALL first responders in ALL St. Louis county municipalities. So if they do what the voters have already approved and utilize the funds that already exist, and update our Brentwood dispatch communications ctr, then Brentwood would have the same resources, mapping capabilities and state of the art equipment to communicate on the same radio frequency with other departments and municipalities. (they currently have this capability but it will just be enhanced with these updates) The difference will be less radio traffic than east central, quicker response times than east central and a more personal and familiar service for the residents and first responders who depend on our dispatchers as a life line. After all, Kirkwood didn’t think it was safer and more efficient when they turned down East Central and elected to maintain their own dispatch center. And those folks experienced one of the worst tragedies imaginable – first hand!
I say leave it alone. What we have works great.
OK, you dial 911, a dispatcher answers. You explain that someone has just left a dead rodent on your porch with live babies in its pouch (marsupial) you drop the phone on the floor cause your toast and jam is getting cold. You mix up a bowl of strawberries and cream and then try and pick up the phone to finish your report and you slip and fall cause there’s marbles all over your kitchen floor.
There’s a bang-bang on the door, you crawl to the front room trying to answer but you can’t get the door open cause the foyer is all clogged up with harassing campaign mail. You struggle to rise up and peek out the window, to your horror a matronly woman is on your stoop with an ax. Luckily you remember your Life Alert with live monitoring for pennies a day: “Our dispatcher talks to you, whether you can reach a phone or not, and sends the help you need fast, 24/7.”
You hit the emergency button on your necklace; I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! The police are immediately dispatched to your residence. Problem solved.
“It’s not outsourcing, it would be joining nearby communities on a community-wide dispatch center,” he said.
Typical politician speak for a man with an agenda. It’s just too bad that what really is best for the residents isn’t a part of that. If it’s not about the money then will someone please ask the Mayor why the City of Brentwood twice previously rejected the idea of going to ECDC? Proposals were twice submitted to Brentwood, once at ECDC’s inception and again in 2006. Twice they were rejected. What’s changed?? Brentwood folks, fight to save our dispatchers. Let these people know what we want. This is nothing but a sell job and we are not getting all the facts. Our “nearby communities” in Ladue, Glendale, Kirkwood, Des Peres are all doing just fine with their own dispatch centers and will continue to do so. There is a reason they want nothing to do with ECDC. It’s common knowledge in the first responder community that ECDC’s services leave a lot to be desired.