Acting director says new Sandaval dispatch center improving amid persistent technical and staffing problems

Acting dispatch director Ivon Fox told the Public Safety Emergency Communications Center governance board on Aug. 19 that the center has made measurable progress in the first 49 days of independent operations while continuing to work through technical and staffing shortfalls.

"We do have quite a bit of updates in the in our 49 days of dispatching for the county," Fox said, outlining steps to verify mapping and addresses, create a CAD test environment and secure access to historical call data that was previously unavailable.

The center has completed a number of milestones, Fox said: conversion access to prior CAD history, a test environment for changes before they are pushed to production, and recent approval to operate NCIC locally rather than relying on a neighboring city's resources. Fox said the center is scheduled to go live on a new cloud‑based E911 call‑handling platform on Sept. 15 and that the intent of the system is to ensure "we will never ever lose a 911 call again." She said staff are continuing work on mobile data terminals (MDTs), automatic vehicle location (AVL) and radio console deployments.

Why it matters: Local chiefs and field personnel said configuration gaps are already affecting response and officer safety in multiple parts of Sandaval County. The board heard repeated requests for faster fixes, clearer wording on helicopter launches and for dispatch to restore or improve tone alerts that trigger agency‑wide attention.

Operational concerns and agency feedback

Police and fire leaders described a range of continuing problems: tone alerts that do not reach all responders, voice‑modulation and volume inconsistencies between dispatchers, delays when Rio Rancho transfers 911 calls to the center, gaps in 700MHz radio coverage in rural terrain, difficulty accessing warrants and flags, and run‑numbering that complicates reporting.

"My recommendation is to relook at that and see if that is a possibility to do tone out," Police Chief Stole (transcript spelling) said, arguing that restoring a pre‑tone would sharpen field awareness and reduce dangerous radio traffic during high‑priority events.

Several chiefs and EMS leaders said callers and officers sometimes get conflicting or incomplete status updates — for example, a helicopter reported as "launched" when it was still performing a weather check — and urged clearer, standardized phrasing for launch and landing‑zone coordination.

Staffing, consoles and NCIC

Fox and operations manager Amber Canrell said the center is budgeted for 19 dispatchers but currently has 12 on staff, plus supervisors and two short‑term experienced hires to hasten training. Canrell said the staff’s live training portion coincided with the center’s launch, lengthening the on‑the‑job learning curve.

Canrell asked agencies for patience while the center continues to refine procedures: "we knew from day one it wasn't going to be perfect, but we do appreciate the patience you guys are giving us and the feedback," she told the board.

The board heard that some consoles being used are temporary proxy laptops and that fully provisioned consoles are scheduled to be installed in late August. Fox also said the NCIC connection was approved the previous week and that the center has taken over NCIC duties from Rio Rancho, a change that required procedural adjustments.

Call routing and vendor issues

Multiple officials described a critical technical issue: some wireless and VoIP calls still route through Rio Rancho rather than directly to Sandaval's trunks because of a firewall/configuration problem at the other center and delays by third‑party vendors. County staff said vendors have been slow to allocate resources to the firewall fix, and that until routing is corrected the center must accept some calls via radio transfer.

"We are pushing every day," the county project manager said; staff told the board they know the fix and are pressing the vendors to act before the planned E911 cutover.

Next steps and follow up

Staff pledged targeted, agency‑level follow‑up. County officials offered to arrange one‑on‑one meetings with agency technical staff to address specific MDT, NCIC, mapping and flow‑MSP (paging) issues. The board and staff agreed to continue monthly operations meetings during the startup phase, with a governance meeting tentatively set for Nov. 18.

The center manager and the county attorney also flagged legal and records issues tied to the center's new role as record custodian for CAD and 911 data; those policy changes were approved in a separate governance action at the meeting.