County spends $640K for call center
By Steve Herring
Published in News on November 5, 2015 1:46 PM
Wayne County commissioners will spend $640,000 to buy an empty building on Cashwell Drive to house the county's expanded 911E call center.
Commissioners approved the deal Tuesday after meeting in closed session for more than two hours to tour the property and to discuss the purchase.
They have until Nov. 16 to back out of the agreement should the county decide that the nearly 9,000-square-foot facility and location do not meet its requirements.
The property is being purchased from Select Bank and Trust Co.
The $6.7 million new 911E call center is part of a $39 million five-year capital improvement plan commissioners approved in June as part of their budget process.
The county has been weighing what to do about its 911 center for several months following a study by Mission Critical consultants on the center's staffing and facility needs. The study recommended that the county either expand its current center or build a new one to add more telecommunicators to handle an increased call volume.
Commissioners had even considered the possibility of a regional call center and had discussions with Greene County officials concerning such a joint endeavor.
The county had hoped to receive a grant through the state's 911 board to help pay for the new center. But the grant was not approved.
"It is a building that was being renovated for a dental office," County Manager George Wood said. "When they did the study, we are topped out over here. So this gives us plenty of room to put it in, and the current one would be the back-up center.
"The advantage is they are on different electrical circuits. So if the substation went down on one, we would still have the other. The same thing on the telco (telephone lines), they are on different exchanges so it gives you that added security there."
Wood said that the purchase happened so quickly that the county was in its due diligence period.
"So we are trying to make sure what we can do about fencing," he said. "As you know, a 911 center has to be hardened compared to a typical building. So we are doing that. We are bringing an architect in and trying to go through those.
"Plus we want to make sure about the interpretation of the (city) codes, fire code, occupancy, stuff like that. All of that is above my pay grade so we are going to let (the architect) work with (the city's) inspector and go from there."
Wood said the building will require some renovations, but that it was too early to know what those would be or how much they might cost.
The building is in "very good shape," he said.
"It came on the market, and we had been looking," he said. "They dropped the price significantly so that kind of piqued our interest. We went and looked at it. We had Kendell Lee, who is over our facilities, in there. We've had Philip Penny, who did the Mission Critical study."
The county had decided to try for the grant again, when the building came on the market, Wood said.
"This is an extremely good deal on it," he said. "During this due diligence period, we could back out if we find that it doesn't work for whatever reason."