MOUNT VERNON — Knox County Commissioner Teresa Bemiller was shocked to learn Sheriff David Shaffer still has reservations about consolidating the two 9-1-1 dispatch centers at the county service center.
“We took our time and did what we needed to do to get the buy-in that we needed,” Bemiller said in reference to approval from the 9-1-1 board. “The goal was to make this more efficient, to provide the public better response time and a dispatching center that operates the same.”
Shaffer expressed concerns last week to the News stating the sheriff’s office would take a hit to its budget because of a need to add staff to perform tasks currently handled by dispatchers such as answering the phone and assisting the public in the lobby. Shaffer also questioned, among other things, the need to spend over $350,000 to create a new dispatch center if the accommodations in his office were sufficient.
“I was very surprised because he had not had that conversation with us that this was going to happen,” Bemiller said. “We really talked to law enforcement about what they wanted to see;
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