911 staffing tight; county to pilot RapidSOS nonemergency tool for six months

Kootenai County 911 supervisors told commissioners on Aug. 5 that dispatcher staffing is at or near minimum coverage and that the office will rely on overtime and ongoing training to maintain operations while adding new hires.

Lieutenant Howard said the center currently has eight employees trained as ECOs and “an additional 5 supervisors who are working double duty, answering calls, dispatch channels, as well as monitoring the shift.” He said one supervisor is about to begin Family Medical Leave and will be out through the end of the year, leaving the center with 12 staff who have radio training and can staff minimum shifts. “Right now, we're getting ready to go into a new cycle at which time we're gonna be assigned 5 12 hour shifts, so 60 hour work weeks, with reduced and limited vacation opportunities,” Howard said.

Howard described the training pipeline: five people in training (soon to be six), one lateral candidate expected to move faster through training, and one trainee already in call-taking who will require two months of fire-medical channel training and separate law training before being fully signed off. Howard said he had three trainers available and had temporarily reassigned a fourth supervisor to training duties; once the supervisor on FMLA departs, training capacity will be reduced.

Commissioners asked for numerical projections. Howard said it is difficult to give a precise staffing projection because trainees need separate fire-medical and law qualifications, but he estimated about 16 fully available staff in six months if training proceeds as planned.

Howard also reported the county has been offered a trial of a RapidSOS program for nonemergency calls. “RapidSOS is a company that had heard about some of our struggles. They reached out and offered us some, free mostly free program for 6 months for non emergency calls. I wanna make that clear. It's not 911 calls,” he said. Howard said the RapidSOS contract has been forwarded to legal and he hoped to have the program implemented within about a month. He said the six-month window could allow the department to shift some workload and potentially adjust staffing decisions as trainees complete qualification.

The commissioners discussed burnout risk and acknowledged the training timeline as the primary near-term constraint. Howard said the main hurdle is time required to complete multi-phase training, not applicant quantity; he reported six applicants are in background checks and one may start within weeks.

No formal decisions were recorded at the meeting beyond staff updates and direction to continue monthly staffing briefings.