Frank Jannetti, director of the Mercer County Department of Public Safety, said the new computer aided dispatch will save time when responding to 911 calls at all the respective borders of the other three counties in the system: Lawrence, Butler and Venango.
Jannetti said if an emergency call in Mercer County requires assistance from departments in one or more of the other three counties, Mercer dispatchers now can directly contact every unit that’s needed.
“It’s so much better than what we had before,” he said.
A CAD drives the responses to 911 calls by assigning the appropriate units.
“That’s why I call it the brains of a 911 center,” Jannetti said.
Under the separate CAD systems, a county dispatch center would have to contact another dispatch center when Mercer County units needed help from ones in other counties.
“We would have to make phone calls to that respective county,” Jannetti said.
He said all four counties can track any of their units wherever they are, saving time and improving efficiency.
Jannetti stressed lives could be saved when response time is reduced.
“Our job is to save seconds,” he said.
According to Jannetti, some areas require responses from departments in multiple counties due to their location.
“We can have three counties engaged in one incident,” he said.
Another advantage to the joint system is it provides an automatic backup for each dispatch center. Jannetti said if one center goes down, another can handle the first county’s 911 calls.
“That’s why I was pushing it so hard,” he said about having a joint CAD.
The main server for the system is at the Butler County dispatch center in Butler Township. Jannetti said Butler is the host site due to its connectivity.
“They have a lot of bandwidth,” he said.
The backup server, called the disaster recovery site, is in Lawrence County.
The state 911 Advisory Board, which advises the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency on the administration and operation of 911 systems in the state, selected the $3.5 million project for funding. PEMA distributes money collected from fees mobile phone users pay on their monthly bills.
Jannetti said the installation of the Motorola PremierOne CAD was chosen due to it being a regional project.
Buying the joint CAD saved all four counties money. Jannetti said Mercer’s cost to buy a new independent system would have been in the $2 million range, with the total price tag for all four counties at roughly $6.5 million.
Jannetti said the new system, which has been operational in Mercer and Lawrence counties since December, was an adjustment for the staff.
“Anytime you deploy a new system, there is a big training curve,” he said.
Jannetti said the dispatchers rose to the task.
“They’ve been doing a great job,” he said.
Butler and Venango counties hooked into the system in January.
Jannetti said the CAD, which needed some modifications, has performed even better than he anticipated.
“I expected there to be more issues,” he said.
Jannetti credited the cooperation among officials from all four counties to complete the project.
“It’s been exemplary,” he said.
The project last week received one of the 2019 Governor’s Awards for Local Government Excellence under the category of Information Technology through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.
The Mercer County commissioners on Thursday approved a joint resolution from all four counties recognizing the project. Commissioner Tim McGonigle said the new CAD is the first one in the state serving multiple counties using a single platform.
“This was the first time this was done in Pennsylvania,” McGonigle said.
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