County will pay $3.8 million in cash for 911 center
By Steve Herring
Published in News on January 19, 2017 9:17 AM
Full Size
News-Argus/STEVE HERRING
James Stumbo, vice president of Steward, Cooper, Newell Architects, discusses the design of the 911 call center during the Wayne County Board of Commissioners Tuesday.
Wayne County will pay approximately $3.8 million in cash to build a new 911 call center.
The final design for the center has not yet been approved.
The funding decision was made Wednesday morning by Wayne County commissioners during a day-long planning retreat, just 24 hours after some of them questioned one aspect of the design schematic.
As presented, the design leaves a notch in one corner where two walls could be built later to add another room.
Commissioners suggested that area instead be completed as the facility is built.
There also was some disagreement with County Manager George Wood's recommendation during the board's Tuesday meeting as to who would be housed at the new center.
Commissioner Wayne Aycock, who challenged Wood on that recommendation, convinced the rest of the board during the Tuesday meeting to table discussion on the plans until their Feb. 7 meeting to allow them more time for study.
The plan was not discussed during the Wednesday planning retreat, but commissioners agreed that paying cash was preferable to financing.
The county plans to build the $3.8 million center on an 18.7-acre vacant lot between the county facilities services office and the animal shelter.
Stewart, Cooper, Newell Architects is the company designing the call center, and Tuesday morning the company's vice president, James Stumbo, explained the schematic design.
Stumbo said commissioners had authorized design for a 9,848-square-foot center as well as an addition that would include space for an emergency operations center.
The plan presented to the board includes the emergency operations center for a total of 11,305 square feet, he said.
"The plan you have in front of you is designed such that the EOC and 911 center could be built separately with the EOC spaces added at a later date or built as one project," Stumbo said.
"It is also designed such that the main 911 telecommunications floor, as the needs or if the needs of the communications center expand, they can actually expand into the EOC space allowing for a very simple, cost-effective expansion.
"Then future EOC space could be added."
Stumbo said the center's floor would be built up over the structural floor to allow cabling and wiring raceways and would extend into the emergency operations center area.
The wall separating the call center and emergency operations center could easily be removed to allow for expansion of the communications area, he said.
Commissioner Joe Daughtery questioned the need for the added expense of a raised floor.
"It is an additional floor," Stumbo said. "It allows a raceway underneath the physical floor that people are walking on and that furniture is on for all of the wiring that will run from the server room to the 911 center and the consoles.
"It will allow for later, as consoles change, to reorganize the room, move the equipment and wire the equipment without any significant cost."
Aycock said the flooring would be paneling that could be removed and would save money in the long run.
It provides easy and better access to the wiring, he said.
It will provide for easier maintenance as well, Stumbo said.
The new center would be more secure than the existing one, Wood said. It would be surrounded by a security fence.
It would have a secured lobby and then more secure doors leading to the center's telecommunicators.
Commissioner Ed Cromartie asked about the number of rooms, particularly ones set aside for positions the county currently does not have.
Some of the new positions are being required by the state, Wood said.
"This is a 40-to-50-year building," Wood said.
"As you know one of the problems we have now is we have no room to expand where we are at. So what we wanted to do was to make sure we were building this thing sufficiently that we could grow and not have to add anything to it.
"The telecommunications area will seat 17 consoles. Some of those are training, but I think 14 will be active. We only have six, but we need eight right now. So what we are looking at is growth area there. The EOC, as we talked about, could be converted over if we needed more growth."
That will be dependent on the call volume, which is primarily driven by Goldsboro police and Sheriff's Office, and some by fire and EMS, he said.
It is hard to say what will happen in 20 or 25 years, but the call volume is trending up, Wood said.
Aycock said the commissioners had the information, but he thought they needed time to review the plan and come up with questions.
He then made a motion to table the issue until the board's Feb. 7 meeting.
Commissioners eventually agreed, but not until nearly 15 more minutes of questions and discussions.
Commissioner Ray Mayo asked Wood if the county was looking at 10 years before having to expand the center.
Wood said he thought it would be much longer and that it was designed for easy expansion.
Mayo asked if an open corner in the area adjoining the emergency operations center was for future expansion. He also questioned why the county would wait to add the space since it would be less expensive to build it to begin with.
Mayo said he also thinks it is better to have all of a department's personnel under one roof.
Wood said he thinks the design has sufficient room since some positions have yet to be filled and that his recommendation would be to leave some personnel at the existing office.
The center will have restricted access, he said.
"If you try to put a lot of emergency management personnel in here, many of them have public contact where the public is coming in to see them," Wood said. "If you do that, then you kind of defeat the purpose of having a security system."
Aycock said he agreed with Mayo about looking at the corner.
"Mr. Wood not to argue with you, but everything is going out there," he said.
"The majority of commissioners I have talked to, we feel like everything needs to go out there. We don't want to disagree with you, but we have our opinions, like you have got yours, and my feeling is we probably are going to consider, very strongly consider, very strongly recommend that everything goes out there."