The state may lose more than half of its 48 public safety answering points.
PARIS – Oxford County Sheriff Lloyd “Skip” Herrick thinks some towns got carried away by the need for “local control” when the state’s Enhanced 911 system went online in the late 1990s.
Herrick told Oxford County commissioners recently that he agreed with the state’s effort to reduce the number of public safety answering points from 48 to between 16 and 24.
The final number, he said, would likely include all 16 county regional communication centers.
A public safety answering point is defined as an emergency E911 telephone answering point operated on a 24-hour basis. The center either directly dispatches emergency services or routes the calls to public or private safety agencies.
Oxford County’s regional communications center in Paris is the only public service answering point in the county. It averages about 18 calls a day.
Likewise, Franklin County has one answering point. It averages 19 calls per day.
In Androscoggin County, there are three answering points. The one run by the sheriff’s department averages 18 calls a day. Another is run by the cities of Lewiston-Auburn. That one averages 71 calls a day – second statewide only to Portland in terms of call volume.
The third, run by the Lisbon Police Department, averages 4.26 calls per day.
Cumberland County has 12 towns or cities with answering points, not including the sheriff’s department or state police. York County has 10 towns or cities with answering points, not including the sheriff’s department.
Maine State Police have four, one each in Augusta, Gray, Orono and Houlton.
“Everybody got carried away with local control and jurisdiction at the time,” Herrick said.
Within the past year, the Public Safety Utilities Commission took over jurisdiction of Enhanced 911 from the state’s Department of Public Safety. Gov. John Baldacci has asked the commission to solicit comments until Jan. 16 about which dispatching centers could be dropped as answering points and still have the 911 system serve the public interest.
The commission is looking at call rates as one criteria for possible elimination but will consider other factors as well.
ggeraghty@sunjournal.com
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