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What happens when you call 911?
Here’s everything a dispatcher does to get emergency services to your location when you dial 911.
Miguel Fernandez, NorthJersey.com
- Brown County Public Safety Communications is facing an ongoing staffing shortage.
- The center’s shift schedule is set to change in May, which dispatchers say will disrupt lives and risk more employees leaving.
- Dispatchers addressed the Brown County Board of Supervisors to share their concerns and seek support.
GREEN BAY – The Brown County 911 dispatch center needs a life jacket, lead dispatcher Caroline Carpiaux told the Brown County Board on Wednesday.
Amidst severe ongoing staffing shortages, dispatchers were informed in February, based on an outside consultant report, that the center’s shift schedule would change starting in May. This goes against what they were told in August, Carpiaux said, that “there would be no schedule changes for 2025 in efforts to take the year and fine tune a change for 2026.”
Dispatchers also addressed the Public Safety Committee with their concerns at the committee’s March meeting. During that meeting, Public Safety Communications Director Chancy Huntzinger said the new schedule would improve efficiency and was designed as close to the current schedule as possible.
The abrupt change has blindsided staff, causing elevated stress, anxiety and concerns, Carpiaux said. Dispatchers set their schedule a year in advance, she said, and a change will impact home lives from child care and court custody arrangements to vacation time.
Dispatcher Kirk Parker also addressed the County Board, stressing the impact the mid-year change will have on working hours. Under the new proposed schedule, Parker said, dispatchers expect to be forced into working 14 hours on their scheduled shift days and may still be forced to come in on days off.
“Instead of wreaking havoc on our personal lives in the middle of the year,” Parker said, “why not work together to go through matrixes scenarios, be a team and come up with what we all can agree upon to be an efficient schedule starting January 2026?”
As the center remains staffed at just 30%, Parker said, dispatchers agree a change is needed to the schedule, which consultants described as complex and difficult to manage. The concern is how it’s being implemented.
In an already understaffed department, the new changes bring the risk that even more people will leave, Carpiaux said, people “who have proven they will do absolutely anything to stay here and help in any way that we can.”
“There are people that are ready to toss a headset on a desk and be like, ‘yeah, I didn’t sign up for this,'” Carpiaux told the Press-Gazette. “I signed up for long hours. I signed up for a stressful job. I signed up to listen people to take their last breaths. I signed up for that, I know that I did, but I didn’t sign up for someone to rip my life from underneath me in the middle of a year.”
And the risk of losing the current team affects more than just the dispatch center, Carpiaux said, it affects the community that depends on dispatchers to get emergency services to them.
No action was taken by the board regarding the dispatchers’ concerns, though multiple supervisors expressed their concern for the employees. Supervisor Patrick Evans said he would vote in favor of the dispatchers’ request, but that it isn’t the board’s authority because the changes were presented as a temporary work rule.
Scheduling decisions are an administrative responsibility, Corporation Counsel David Hemery said, and while the County Board can vote to ask the center’s management team reconsider their decision, they can’t make the change themselves. However, that option wasn’t available Wednesday night as no official action item was up for a vote.
Even though no action was taken, Carpiaux said the conversation among supervisors is the reaction dispatchers were looking for. She hopes it’s the start to a snowball that will keep rolling.
“It’s huge that it’s finally starting to seem like we’re being heard,” Carpiaux said.
Vivian Barrett is the public safety reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette. You can reach her at vmbarrett@greenbay.gannett.com or (920) 431-8314. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @vivianbarrett_.
