editorial, Thu, August 6th, 2009

We at The Spotlight are big fans of shared services.
Whether it’s in the realm of school districts, municipal services like infrastructure maintenance or emergency services, we feel that centralized services are a boon to municipalities in the sense that they pool resources and reduce administrative costs.
Saratoga Springs is one of three municipalities in the county that handles its own dispatch services, the other two being Mechanicville and Waterford. The Village of Ballston Spa switched to county dispatch in May. The dispatch center is run out of the county jail in Milton.
Some Saratoga Springs officials balked at the idea of having those out-of-towners in the rest of Saratoga County in control of dispatch services within the Spa City.
“Is there really saving here when we’re doing this kind of dispatching, when we don’t have local knowledge?” asked Commissioner of Public Safety Ron Kim.
We understand that to many Saratogians, places like Milton and Ballston Spa may as well be Kabul or Tanzania. The idea of some yahoo in the county dispatch center trying to direct emergency vehicles through the historic streets of downtown will no doubt cause more emergencies than it will address.
You may as well patch it through to a telemarketer in Mumbai.
Here’s the problem: It’s already happening.
All emergency calls made from a cell phone in Saratoga Springs — or any other part of the county — bypass local dispatch and are handled by county dispatch.
Kim cited a July 4 incident in which a cell phone call from Saratoga National Golf Course for a possible injury resulted in responders being sent to the Saratoga Golf and Polo Club on the other end of town.
That is unacceptable, and the city must do one of two things to avoid this: Either retool the city’s dispatch service so that it can field calls made from cell phones within city limits, or — and this idea is way out there — talk to people at the county dispatch center to preempt situations like the golf club/polo club mix up.
We’re a fan of the latter. After all, as Commissioner of Finance Ken Ivins said —the city is already paying for dispatching services in the rest of the county through county sales tax, and essentially is paying for dispatching twice over.

CATEGORY: General Society

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