Emergency Center Gets New Digs in Kane County - Xybix Dispatch Furniture

Littleton, CO - September 08, 2009

Emergency Center gets new digs in Kane County - Xybix Dispatch Furniture

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By Staff photo by Mark Busch
Dispatcher James Holden works at his new station during the Tour of the new Kane County Offices of Emergency Communications and Emergency Mangement at the Kane County Government Center Friday Sept. 4.

By Hal Conick, hconick@mysuburbanlife.com
Suburban Life Publications
Tue Sep 08, 2009, 06:09 PM CDT
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In the data center of Kane County’s brand new 911 Center and Office of Emergency Management, a room filled with machines, the sound of radio frequencies and a series of wires keeps everything running smoothly in emergency response and local radio frequencies.

“This is probably the neatest this wiring has ever been, and I’ve been here seven years,” said Roger Fahnestock, executive director of information technology. “Everything seems to be working.”

Located in the Kane County Government Center at 719 S. Batavia Ave. in St. Charles, the new center opened last month and cost just less than the budgeted $1.4 million to construct, according to Kane County Chairman, Karen McConnaughay.

Officials say the old center was poorly designed and frequently suffered from power outages and other problems. With new generators and backup batteries, the new facility should be free of those problems. Fahnestock said the new center has backup power for four hours, as opposed to 30 minutes at the old center.

With the old system, “you had to make a pretty difficult decision about bailing over to Tri-Comm (the Tri-Cities’ dispatch center),” Fahnestock said. “This is more consistent.”

Jennifer Baustian, the 911 director, showed off the new center during a press tour Friday morning as three of the county’s 17 dispatchers worked away. Dispatchers in the new center manage calls for 16 police and fire agencies, the largest user being the Kane County Sheriff’s Office, with about 56 percent of the calls.

“We actually brought everything with us from the old building,” Baustian said. McConnaughay said the county saved millions of dollars by choosing to move to an existing building and use old equipment.

A relocation of this magnitude normally costs $3 million to $5 million, according to Alan Kruml, vice president of Winebourne and Costas Inc., a consulting company that helped with the move.

“This was a quick opening that was done on the cheap,” Kruml said. “Not many 911 facilities can boast something this nice for the dollar (amount).”
Baustian said the move was successful and they are extremely happy with the new space.

“The biggest thing (in the move) was that police and fire couldn’t detect that we were moving,”

Baustian said of the three days between Aug. 10 and 12 that it took to move equipment from the old sheriff’s office location. Baustian said frequencies were down for only about 60 seconds during the move.

The Kane County 911 center saw 46,000 calls to 911 in 2008.

In the county’s “situation room,” as Don Bryant, director of the office of emergency management, called it, there is now an additional 200 to 300 square feet of space. It was all put together with old equipment and about $50,000.

Bryant said this room is used to prepare volunteers and workers from different departments in the event of a large-scale emergency locally, statewide or even nationally.
“When anything major happens, the 911 center lights up like a Christmas tree,” Bryant said.

“We’re able to take pressure off of them.”

McConnaughay said she’s proud to be able to put together a quality space for such an important service in Kane County.
“Especially in trying times of cost-cutting measures,” McConnaughay said. “This is something we can really be proud of.”