By Gretchen Webster

Calls to Westport’s emergency services, including police, fire and medical services, will be directed to a new location — a state-of-art emergency dispatch center at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, effective Wednesday.

The Fairfield County Regional Dispatch is now handling all emergency calls for Westport and Fairfield, and fire calls for New Canaan, which have been administered by the Westport 911 call center for years.

In the future, other area towns may join the dispatch center in Fairfield, according to Gary MacNamara, executive director of public safety and government affairs for Sacred Heart, and a former Fairfield police chief.

MacNamara’s relationship with Westport Police Chief Foti Koskinas helped formulate plans for a joint dispatch center several years ago, MacNamara said. 

Although Fairfield’s services were moved into the new center a year ago, Westport dispatchers are moving in this week.

“We only expect to provide a better service to the citizens of the towns of Fairfield and Westport, with better access to public safety in one combined dispatch center,” Koskinas said in a statement released Tuesday, the day before Westport’s services officially joined the dispatch center.

“Our officers, firefighters and emergency telecommunicators working in conjunction with each other, in one center, will enhance the level of service provided to our communities,” the chief said.

All of Westport’s 911 calls will now be received at the FCRD in Fairfield, but the calls will be handled the same way as before, explained Lt. Eric Woods, the public information officer and administrative lieutenant for the Westport Police Department. 

Callers to 911 will be asked, “Where’s your emergency?” The call be logged and then transferred to a Westport dispatcher, “the same way” calls have been handled in Westport for years, Woods said.

He also assured Westport residents that Westport Police Department headquarters on Jesup Road remains open and welcoming, with a uniformed officer handling in-person inquiries and complaints.

“The trend nationally is to cut down on 911 centers,” which in the past most cities and towns operated independently, MacNamara said. There are cost savings when communities work together, and since neighboring towns often provide mutual aid for emergency calls, a regional dispatch center makes sense, he said.

“I think that with the change and with bringing two separate organizations together it’s not going to be without it’s challenges, but I’m confident that it is going to be a well-run and beneficial organization for everyone involved,” MacNamara said.

A concern about the combined dispatch center was raised by the Communication Workers of America local, which represents dispatchers. Union officials had called for the merger to be delayed until more training was provided for workers at the new center.

But Kevin Sheil, president of Communications Workers of America Local 1103, said Wednesday, “At this point we’re not stopping [the merger]. The union has always supported the merger. 

“We raised a question on training and the town feels that there has been adequate training. So for the sake of the towns, we hope it goes well. We will continue to be vigilant as the merger progresses,” he said.

The union’s concern was about cross training, Sheil said, because dispatchers from both towns had to learn how to work between their respective systems.

Lt. Michael Paris, public information officer for the Fairfield Police Department, said, “We will respect our town unions and ensure that information is passed along quickly — each officer [and dispatcher] will handle their own town’s calls.

“… We have citizens’ safety in mind and will do anything we can to make things easier for our police officers and firefighters, and safer for the community as a whole,” Paris added.

Space for the Fairfield County Regional Dispatch, located on the first floor of Sacred Heart’s Ryan Matura Library, is being leased to the two towns for $1 annually  for the next 25 years, according to a news release from Sacred Heart. The two communities invested $3.7 million “to transform the center into a state-of-the–art facility,” the release said.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.