Dispatcher Shortage Continues
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
COFFEEVILLE – A chronic shortage of dispatchers continues to plague the dispatch center where all of the county’s 911 emergency calls and communications with law, fire and medical personnel flow through.
Yalobusha County EMA Director Stewart Spence reported during a Board of Supervisors meeting Monday that only five dispatchers will be employed at the start of December. Fully staffed, the dispatch center should employ eight full-time dispatchers and a minimum of four part-time dispatchers to ensure two dispatchers are on duty for each 12-hour shift, 365 days a year. The smaller staff means dispatchers work overtime hours each month.
Monday’s board meeting in Coffeeville followed a personnel meeting a week earlier as Board President Cayce Washington, District 4 Supervisor Eddie Harris and Board Attorney Shannon Crow met with dispatchers to discuss concerns related to payroll issues. The issues cited by dispatchers and shared by Washington included questions about the county’s payroll policy including the use of compensatory time, commonly called comp time.
Per the county policy, county employees earn an hour and a half of comp time for every extra hour they work over 40 hours per week to ensure they get the same value that they would earn from a time-and-a-half overtime pay. The comp time can be utilized for paid time off but with the shortage, it is difficult to find a dispatcher to cover a shift if another dispatcher needs time off from work.
Another example cited by Washington was a part-time dispatcher who earned overtime pay for the weeks she worked over 40 hours. When the dispatcher was shifted to full-time status, the county policy requires that the extra hours she works accrues as comp time and is not reflected on her monthly earnings.
“They can bank comp time until it gets to a certain threshold and then we have to pay it,” Washington explained about the 240 hours of comp time employees can accrue. The accumulated comp time is paid to employees when they take time off from work or if they leave the job and receive a lump sum payment.
Other concerns from dispatchers shared by Washington were questions about variations from one monthly pay period to the next. Washington explained that dispatchers work 12 hours shifts, and some weeks a dispatcher may work four or five shifts, accumulating overtime hours, and other weeks a dispatcher may work two or three shifts and fall short of 40 hours. He explained that comp time is used to back-fill the weeks that are short of a full 40 hours.
The problem, cited in the meeting, is the employees have difficulty determining what their monthly earnings will be based on the hours they work. This problem is compounded when the time sheets are turned in several days prior to the end of the month, and a dispatcher ends up working an extra shift that is not on the time sheet. The additional hours worked are not paid until the next month’s pay period.
Supervisors briefly discussed ending the use of comp time, and paying all employees in the county a time-and-a-half for each hour of overtime worked each month before ultimately deciding to work with the dispatchers help them better understand the payroll procedures.
“The overall big issue is hiring,” Chancery Clerk Amy McMinn explained about the shortage of dispatchers, which triggers the extra hours existing dispatchers are working. The starting pay for dispatchers is $11, and increases to $12.50 when the employee becomes certified.
“Staffing could be the issue. This is a lot of the same problems we are having (in other departments), it is hard to find people who want to work,” Washington agreed. “I am going to be down two men by the end of the year,” Washington said about his road crew. “But I am not going to have to work the (other) guys overtime because we are not mandated to work.”
Washington added that the situation with dispatchers is obviously different.
“They have to work, in their situation they may have a suicide person on the other end of the phone or a deputy getting shot at. A crisis,” Washington continued.
“Have there been some shifts where they has only been one person working?” McMinn asked Spence about the dispatcher shortage.
“Last week we had one day shift where we only had one person on, but that is the only time so far,” Spence answered.
Spence and deputy EMA Director Jarred Logan were hired as the county’s EMA directors in March, 2022, and volunteered a month later to handle the dispatch center. They first expressed concern to supervisors during an August meeting about the difficulty of finding and keeping employees to staff the county’s dispatch center. At that time there were nine dispatchers.
One problem mentioned during the August meeting was the location of the dispatch center that is inside the county jail, as dispatchers also assist with jail operations including unlocking doors and monitoring prisoners. The jail layout allows dispatchers to monitor multiple pods that house prisoners from inside a centrally located room, but the location has been cited as distracting when handling emergency calls and even a potential security risk for the dispatchers.
