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New dispatch center taking shape
Opening targeted for April 25
Fred Tafoya from TFC Contracting hangs a door in the new Cibola Regonal
Communications Center Tuesday. The center will handle police and fire
dipactch calls for most of Cibola County, excluding Milan, reservation
and federal jurisdictions. It is scheduled to open on April 25, 2006.
[Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]
By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau
GRANTS — The new consolidated dispatching center for
Cibola County's local police, fire and ambulance services is rapidly taking
shape in a remodeled portion of the county complex in downtown Grants.
Director Sheila Grant said the go-live date has been pushed back only
three days, to Tuesday, April 25.
This week construction crews were putting their finishing touches on the
remodeling on the nine-room center which is an expansion of the former
Cibola County Sheriff's Office radio room.
She said the Watson company of Denver will install the triple-station
console this coming week. The week after that the Positron equipment will
be installed, she added.
That will leave April 21-24 for training herself and the eight dispatchers
(including two supervisors), which she indicated won't be any big problem
because the eight are all the existing dispatchers from the Cibola County
Sheriff's Office and the Grants City Police Department. While the director's
two assistants have been chosen, their names have not yet been announced
officially.
The heavy workload to be ready for the targeted opening date the actual
first broadcast time will be determined on the 21st, she said will be
typing in all the unit numbers and other codes into the computerized system.
All the local agencies, as part of emergency preparedness-homeland security,
have been assigned numbers within their group.
Since there are more than a dozen rural volunteer fire departments, they
have a separate set of unit numbers.
Almost $1.2 million has been obtained from state and federal grants for
the complex.
After the go-live date, citizens won't be able to go to the dispatch center
and have direct contact with the dispatchers, as they do now, through
thick glass windows in the lobby.
Although plans are to install an outdoor direct line telephone to the
inside, with a video camera, city residents will still be able to receive
direct help at the police station on East Roosevelt Avenue during non-holiday
business hours, but only if a secretary is available. It will be the same
for the new sheriff's station at the Cibola County Justice Center just
outside the city limits on old Route 66.
Milan has decided to keep doing its own dispatching at the police station
at Village Hall on Uranium Avenue, but the village will be charged a monthly
fee for each resident, which will be considerably more than a planned
one-third of the cost for the first full year of operating costs. The
consolidation also does not include state, federal or tribal agencies,
which operate their own radio centers.
— To contact reporter Jim Maniaci in Grants, telephone
285-6184 or (505) 870-7775 (cellular).
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Thursday
April 6, 2006
Selected Stories:
Mother Hubbard's Cupboards;
County searching for funding for Gallup Community Pantry
Grandmother's arrest prompts elderly Diné
to seek meth education
New dispatch center taking shape;
Opening targeted for April 25
City of Gallup pumps up support for
funding of local fitness center
Deaths
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