Generally speaking we favor good ideas wherever we find them. Also generally speaking, we think saving money is a good idea.
Specifically speaking, we are not so sure the Dept. of Public Safety Commissioner’s proposal to consolidate the state’s 26 Public Safety Answering Points (PSAP) into two, is a good idea, even if it saves a little bit of money.
What it comes down to, really, is how much is a life worth? What happens when a call from any Lincoln County town has to go to Portland or Bangor or Augusta or wherever to be dispatched, adding a few precious seconds between the call for help and the response? What happens when a few extra seconds mean the difference between life and death?
That’s really what we are talking about here – life and death, separated in this case by tax dollars.
Remember the incident involving a death on the Southport Bridge a couple years ago? That call went to the Augusta call center, which dispatched first to Knox and then Sagadahoc County because people outside Lincoln County had no idea where Southport was.
That confusion added seven extra minutes to the response time. To this day, Public Safety has never bothered to explain why it took seven extra minutes to get the call where it needed to go.
In that specific case, a few extra minutes weren’t crucial, but in the emergency business, every second counts. Ask any responder. They are generally maniacal about two things, safety and response time.
Then too, the Lincoln County Communication Center just won kudos, again, for its performance during Tropical Storm Irene.
Our communications center also serves four client towns in Kennebec County and by all accounts, those towns are very pleased with the service, which raises this point: Instead of taking our PSAP away, why doesn’t the state figure out what we are doing so well and take that knowledge away instead?
