Years in the making, Outagamie County finally has a new 911 dispatch center. The first call into the new facility was at 9:20 Thursday morning.
“I no longer will dread going to work and walking down the stairs into what we call the dungeon,” said Heather Fischer, a dispatcher who’s worked for Outagamie County for 17 years.
The borough has reached a $225,000 settlement with a former town emergency services dispatcher who sued the borough, claiming he was fired because he was a whistleblower and was subjected to a hostile workplace.
Ohio’s 911 system is getting a major upgrade.
Rural eastern Ohio’s Washington and Monroe counties have become the first in the state to implement Next Generation 911 (NG911), an internet-based emergency response system that allows Ohioans in an emergency to text and send photos and videos.
The state believes the technology will improve rural area’s emergency response times – which typically take twice as long as their urban counterparts.
In December, Casandra Reid of Lenoir became the very first student to graduate from the 911 Communications & Operations program at Richmond Community College, a goal she set for herself when she signed up in fall 2023.
“I was determined to finish in one year and to be the first to complete this new associate degree program at RichmondCC,” Reid said. “Hard work definitely pays off.”
Conspicuously absent from the auction-proceeds language is any mention of mention of using the spectrum-auction proceeds to fund the transition of 911 centers nationwide from legacy systems to IP-based NG911 technologies—something former FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed three years ago. In the past, cost estimates for such federal funding ranged from $10 billion to $20 billion.
