Sarasota County 9🯍

Working Part-Time for the County

Some interesting things happened in 1984.
  • Zoe, the first frozen-embryo child, was born in Melbourne, Australia.
  • Geraldine Ferraro, a Democrat, became the first woman to be a major-party candidate for Vice President.
  • Svetlana Savitskaya was the first woman to walk in space followed in a few months by Kathy Sullivan, the first American woman to walk in space.
  • Challenger carried the first Canadian, Marc Garneau, into space.
  • Astronauts aboard the shuttle snared a satellite in the first space salvage.
  • Barbara and I got married in Sarasota, Florida.
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    I went to work for the county that spring when I accepted a part-time job with the South County Ambulance District in Venice. We called it SCAD for short.

    I was still working full-time as a dispatcher with the Sarasota Police. On Saturday and Sunday afternoons, when I finished my shift with the police department, I would hightail it down U.S. 41 to SCAD抯 dispatch center where I would work until midnight.

    South County Ambulance District

    IT WASN扵 a high tech job. We had a basic business phone and a desktop radio with a plectron that had to be encoded individually to tone out each of the four ambulance stations. Transmissions and phone calls were recorded on cassette tapes that sat on a shelf over the dispatcher抯 desk. There was one dispatcher on duty at a time. 9🯍 had not yet come to Sarasota County. There was a mishmash of numbers for people to call if they needed the police, sheriff抯 office, highway patrol, fire department, or an ambulance. What 7-digit number they called depended on what type of help they needed and where they lived. They called SCAD抯 7-digit number if they needed an ambulance south of Blackburn Point Road to the county line (except within the City of North Port).

    Although SCAD provided emergency medical service for the entire southern end of the county except North Port, we were seldom busy. Seven calls in an eight-hour shift was considered a busy shift. Of course, it was a good thing that we weren抰 usually all that busy since we had a number of other things that we had to do. We processed all the billing, preparing and mailing bills, receipts for payments received, second and third notices on delinquent accounts, and recording payments in the accounts receivable system.

    We had other clerical duties. It was my specific task to track all the maintenance and facilities reports and record corrective actions taken and then to compile those reports into one monthly summary for SCAD抯 administrators. The dispatchers also did typing as necessary to assist the shift supervisors. That included typing up memoranda, reports, and training material.

    We kept the drug supply in dispatch. This meant that any paramedic needing to restock a controlled drug had to come to dispatch and receive the drug from the dispatcher. It was a good way to meet all the ambulance crews and a good way to learn the names of the different drugs carried onboard the trucks.

    SCAD was EMS only, not fire. We had 4 stations: one on Venice Avenue at the base of the drawbridge on the mainland side, one in Nokomis near where the old Laurel School used to stand, one on Annex Road where county Station 32 and the south county sheriff抯 office is currently located, and one on Old Englewood Road just before its intersection with Englewood Road where the current county Station 34 is located. Two of the stations were mobile homes. Station 34 still is a mobile home.

    Each station had one A.L.S. ambulance running out of it each except for Station 1 on Venice Avenue. It had two A.L.S. ambulances and sometimes a B.L.S. unit. It was also home to the rescue truck that the members of the department had constructed themselves.

    I was at SCAD for a year, leaving in the spring of 1985 when my family and I moved to Washington, D.C.

    Venice Control Center

    I WENTto work for the county again in January 1993 after my family and I returned to Florida from the D.C.-Baltimore area. The job wasn抰 with SCAD but with Sarasota County Emergency Management. That agency operated the Venice Control Center. This center was seen as the precursor to the county抯 consolidated emergency communications center and provided dispatch service for the Sarasota County Fire Department in the southern end of the county, for the City of Venice Fire Department, and for the Nokomis and South Venice Volunteer Fire Departments. The county fire department provided EMS service for all of South Sarasota County from Blackburn Point Road south to the Charlotte County line except for the City of North Port where the fire department runs its own EMS division.

    Venice Control was a secondary PSAP (Public Safety Answering Point). Sarasota County had implemented its 9🯍 system while I was up north. Anyone needing an ambulance or a fire truck within our service area would call 9🯍 and the 9🯍 operator in Sarasota would transfer the caller to Venice Control on a direct telephone circuit.

    This center was a bit more high tech than the old SCAD dispatch center from which it had evolved. It was located in a new building: Venice Fire Station 2 on North Grove Street. It had two full working positions and a place for a third dispatcher to help with phones as needed. We used Motorola Centracom II communications consoles and were tied into the sheriff抯 office CAD system.

    Consolidation

    IN 1995 the powers-that-be in Sarasota County government decided that they would change directions where the consolidated emergency communications center was concerned. Instead of making it a part of Emergency Management and hence free from control of any of the agencies for which it would dispatch, the county decided to place the consolidated center with the existing 9🯍 center which had been operating as the communications division of the county sheriff抯 office.

    Venice Control was the first of the dispatch centers to be absorbed by the sheriff抯 office when on June 1, 1995, it became part of that office.

    Consolidated Communications Center

    ON FEBRUARY 10, 1996, the Consolidated Communications Center became operational. Located on the top floor of the County Administration Building on Ringling Boulevard in downtown Sarasota, the sheriff抯 office dispatchers and 9🯍 operators were the first to occupy the new facility. Venice Control followed when its operations and personnel were relocated out of Venice Fire Station 2 and into the new center in April 1996. The former City of Sarasota Fire Department dispatchers and their operations, the last independent fire dispatch center in Sarasota County, relocated to the new center in February 1997.

    All 9🯍 calls originating in Sarasota County are received in the consolidated center. The only agencies which are not dispatched by the center are the North Port and Venice Police Departments. The City of Longboat Key straddles the Sarasota-Manatee County line. The city has its own police and fire agencies with its own dispatch center. Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport likewise straddles the north county line. Security at the airport is provided by the Manatee County Sheriff抯 Office. They have their own fire supression operation; medical calls are handled by Sarasota County Fire Department.

    Shortly after relocating to the consolidated center, the former Venice Control operation started providing dispatch service for two new agencies: Englewood Fire Department and the City of North Port Fire-Rescue. About half of Englewood抯 response area is located south of the county line in Charlotte County. The South Venice Volunteer Fire Department disbanded a few years ago.


    Click on the torch for a memorial
    Firefighter Mick Rovero

    When I left the center in February 1999, the following agencies were dispatched from the consolidated center.

  • Sarasota County Sheriff抯 Office
  • City of Sarasota Police Department
  • Sarasota County Fire Department
  • City of Venice Fire Department
  • Nokomis Volunteer Fire Department
  • City of North Port Fire-Rescue
  • Englewood Area Fire Control District
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    A 6700-square-foot facility, the center typically was staffed by 4 to 12 9🯍 operators, 10 dispatchers, and two supervisors. These numbers tended to fluctuate a lot. Sometimes there would be a couple more supervisors working a dispatch or call-taking position. Sometimes we had a fire supervisor, sometimes we didn抰. There were 5 fire dispatch positions. After midnight, that sometimes dropped to 4.

    There are separate offices for the center manager, operations manager, support manager, for the shift supervisors, and for the training coordinators. There is a break room immediately outside the center that is also used by the rest of the building. The break room is used by center personnel for preshift briefings. There is no bathroom within the center. It抯 on the other side of the building.

    In 1998 the Center processed 194,664 9🯍 calls. It issued 238,823 case numbers to the sheriff抯 office and 75,519 case numbers to the police department. Fire dispatchers dispatched 41,865 calls.


    For more pictures, click on the photo link.

    In January 1999 I completed my sixth consecutive year as a fire-rescue dispatcher with Sarasota County. I left in February 1999.

    Lessons Learned

    THIS WAS the second consolidated center at which I had worked. It didn抰 work so well here. Making the consolidated 9🯍 center part of the sheriff抯 office was a mistake. It should have been an independent agency within county government and not a part of any of the agencies for which it dispatched. Political turf wars, split loyalties, and a decidedly law enforcement orientation all caused operational problems.

    I don抰 intend to go off on a rant here. It would serve no purpose. I merely make the observation that my experience at Sarasota 9🯍 convinced me that three things are essential for a successful consolidation. These three ingredients are planning, training, and keeping your promises. There was precious little of any of these three in evidence at this consolidation. That lack has led to a phenomenally high turnover in staffing, the lowest morale of anywhere I抳e ever worked, a total lack of personnel management capability, abysmal management, and abominable supervision.

    I am not pointing the finger at any one individual here, quite the contrary. The center works and services are provided to those who need those services by individual dispatchers who refuse to allow the systemic problems to render the center completely inefficient if not ineffectual. The problems are systemic not individual.

     
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