County OKs 911 center design
By Steve Herring
Published in News on February 8, 2017 10:07 AM
The schematic floor plan for Wayne County's new $3.8 million 911 call center was unanimously approved Tuesday morning by Wayne County commissioners.
The vote clears the way for Stewart, Cooper, Newell Architects to proceed with the full design and create the specs and bid documents.
Commissioners plan to pay cash for the call center to be located on an 18.7-acre vacant lot between the county Facilities Services Office and the animal shelter.
Commissioner Joe Daughtery asked if the board was just approving the design and not necessarily the specs for construction.
"You have to give him approval at some point on the schematic design that you want him to go forward with full design, creating the specs, the bid documents and all of that," County Manager George Wood said. "If you are ready to approve the floor layout, then you would authorize him to go full design today.
"If you are not, and you want to wait another two weeks, then you would come back and vote on it at that point. Before he goes to full design we need to lock down this (floor plan) is what you want done. If you sign off on this, the next time you see him is when he has full design specifications and is ready to bid it out. This really is the critical vote for you all."
There was no mention Tuesday of a disagreement between some commissioners and Wood over what offices would be located at the call center.
During the board's Jan. 17 session, Wood recommended that certain offices, which require more public interaction, not be moved to the secured call center.
Commissioners countered that they wanted all administrative offices in the Office of Emergency Services at the new center. The plan approved Tuesday reflects that and includes offices for the fire marshal and the Office of Emergency Services director.
The office grouping shown on the plan presented Tuesday by James Stumbo, Stewart, Cooper, Newell Architects vice president, was somewhat different from the penciled-in names on the plan included in the board's agenda packet, Wood said.
But it includes the offices recommended by the board's Facilities Committee, he said.
Also, the plan includes squaring off the back left corner of the building.
The original plan had left a notch in that corner to be completed at some future time by adding two walls, floor and roof.
Neither plan changed anything about the 911 telecommunicators area or the emergency operations center, Wood said.
However, if more space is needed for telecommunicators, the wall separating the emergency operations center from the call center can be "easily" removed to allow for expanding the call center, Wood said.
Should that happen, the building is designed so that an emergency operations center could be added, Wood said.
Wood reminded the board that cabling would be in runs between the structure's floor and the floor of the rooms. That flooring can be moved in order to get to the cable.
The floor is the same in the emergency operations center, he said.
Commissioner Wayne Aycock, who made the motion to proceed with the floor plan, said the design looked good and was what had been requested by the board.
"The title, or what's designated to these offices now, I just want everybody to understand that could change," he said. "The schematics of what he has got probably will not change, but the titles of some of those offices could be shifted around."
Aycock said he did not see an office for the emergency medical services shift supervisor.
Stumbo said he had been told that office would not be moved to the new 911 center
"The EMS shift supervisor will move over to Station 6 (on Madison Avenue) and run out with Medic 6," said Mel Powers, Office of Emergency Services director. "If we put the shift supervisor over there (911 center), we would have to put a bed in there because it is a 24-hour-a-day operation."
Aycock asked if the shift supervisor could have an office at the 911 center and have sleeping quarters somewhere else.
Powers said it would be best to move the supervisor to Station 6 since they are out on the road most of the day.
Daughtery said he thought the only question commissioners still had was whether the center would be built to withstand wind speeds of 200 mph or 130 mph or 110 mph as required by county code.
He asked if that needed to be decided Tuesday as well.
"It would certainly need to be decided within the next month when we start doing the actual details on how to construct it because that will impact what we design very specifically," Stumbo said.
Wood said he would get cost differentials and what would entailed for the building to withstand the different wind speeds.
"But I think we were looking between 130 and 200 mph, if I remember correctly," he said. "Where did the 130 come from?"
The building code requires a building be able to withstand 110 mph winds, and 200 mph was what was originally discussed, Stumbo said.
The 130 mph was just the mean point between 110 and 200, he said.
Stumbo said buildings meant to withstand 110 mph and 200 mph winds have been built and that he has "pretty good numbers" for those. The cost of anything in between would be an estimate, he said.
The "rough" cost difference between building for 110 mph winds and 200 mph winds is about $400,000, he said
Wood said the board's Facilities Committee could meet once cost estimates are available and report back to the full board.
"There is one thing that I want people to keep in mind," Aycock said. "We are primarily focused on wind here from hurricanes. There is nothing that says we can't have a tornado. We have had tornadoes in Wayne County, and I am not saying that we need to necessarily prioritize that, but we need to keep in mind that we are looking beyond the winds of a hurricane."