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Cumberland County 911 director outlines staffing gains, ARPA-funded upgrades
Summary
Communications director Melinda Fairbrother Dyer told the finance committee the county’s regional communications center is filling vacancies, has grant applications pending, and plans several ARPA-funded radio and facility upgrades including an isolation room and a first-responder mental-health initiative.
Melinda Fairbrother Dyer, director of Cumberland County Communications (the regional communications/911 center), told the Finance Committee on Oct. 12 that the center is seeing staffing improvements and outlined planned capital and program spending largely funded with federal ARPA and grant dollars.
Fairbrother Dyer said the center partners with 19 communities and answers about 95 911 calls per day for the Cumberland County RCC line item. She listed current staffing as the communications director, one deputy director, six shift supervisors, 16 line staff and eight trainees; vacancies include four line staff and one shift supervisor. Two staffers who left during COVID have since returned.
On capital needs, Fairbrother Dyer said the county has applied for a roughly $40,000 grant to buy laptops for leadership and evacuation planning. She said the county expects to use ARPA “revenue loss” funds—about $500,000 to $700,000—for a regional radio infrastructure upgrade that the sheriff’s office and municipal responders will use, and that approximately $1 million has been identified to help partner agencies buy portable radios compatible with the upgraded system.
The director said the county has secured roughly $1.4 million in ARPA funds for a center upgrade—new chairs, furniture, flooring—and to build a room with a dedicated air system so ill employees can work apart from others during infectious-disease events. Fairbrother Dyer described an initiative to expand first-responder mental-health services, funded from the county’s workers’ compensation reimbursement fund, that will include clinician access and a clinician-recommendation app tailored to public-safety culture.
Committee members asked about alternatives to trailers for isolated dispatching (such as using partner municipalities’ dispatch centers) and coordination to reduce radio “dead spots.” Fairbrother Dyer said the proposed isolation room is to avoid sending potentially ill employees into other centers and explained the ARPA-funded radio work aims to reduce regional coverage gaps. She and County Manager Jim Gailey said some ARPA funds have constraints: they cannot be used to offset taxes and must reasonably connect to pandemic response or disproportionate impact mitigation.
No formal committee vote was taken on the communications budget on Oct. 12; members said they would follow up with written questions and receive updated budget materials before the November meeting.
