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Committee backs reclassifications in public-safety communications and engineering to align duties with modern operations
Summary
The finance committee recommended converting a sunsetted Dispatch/Operator 3 position into a communications supervisor at PSAP and updating a CAD technician role in engineering to an engineering data and geospatial analyst to improve supervision, data management and recruitment.
The New Haven Finance Committee on Jan. 13 recommended reclassifying an obsolete Dispatch/Operator 3 title to a communications supervisor in the city’s public-safety answering point (PSAP) and replacing an outgoing CAD technician position in engineering with an engineering data and geospatial analyst.
City officials said the Dispatch/Operator 3 title has been sunsetting since civilianization in 2007 and cannot be tested for under current civil-service rules. Reclassifying an existing budgeted slot to a communications supervisor will help the center maintain required supervisory coverage, reduce overtime and improve administrative capacity for tasks such as audit responses and FOIA requests. Officials said PSAP answered roughly 471,009 combined 911 and nonemergency calls in the calendar year and ran with a significant number of vacancies; supervisors noted the center has been short-staffed at times and that supervisory coverage is essential for continuous operation.
In engineering, a long-serving CAD technician who performed digitization work is retiring and the department proposed evolving the role into an engineering data and geospatial analyst to better manage GIS datasets, interactive infrastructure maps and the city’s asset data. City engineering staff said modern design and asset-management work requires data-curation and GIS skills that better match current needs and will help produce higher-quality, machine-readable datasets for planning and operations.
Presenters said both changes are classification-level updates; PSAP’s reclassification is a transfer of an existing budget position number (no net new positions) and the engineering title will follow classification and union review. Committee members asked about fiscal impacts and staffing: officials said small salary differences at PSAP will be covered by typical lapsed-salary savings in that department and that engineering’s new title is expected to fall into a comparable classification range.
The committee voted to recommend both reclassifications favorably to the full Board of Alders.
What’s next: PSAP will continue active recruitment and training classes; engineering will submit the new classification for union and civil-service processing before hiring a replacement.
