This coming Tuesday night,
January 24, 2017, our Town Council will conduct a workshop pertaining to the
Lisbon Communication Center. The start time is
06:00 PM which is an earlier
start time than normal meetings/workshop.
The last time, the Lisbon Communication Center was discussed was on
October 6, 2015.
At that time, the Town
Council received a dog and pony show orchestrated by the Police
Department. This dog and pony show was filled with misinformation and false
statements. The reason it was
allowed to happen is because of politics.
At no time did the members of this dog and pony show verify their facts
and certainly did not have the best interest of the community at heart. This is apparent by the FACT that all 911 calls received by
the Androscoggin County Dispatch have to be relayed to the Lisbon Communication
Center before our First Responded can be dispatched. If they could
not reach the Lisbon Communication Center, First Responders do not get
dispatched to the scene. I personally
visited the Androscoggin County Dispatch and talked to the two operators on
duty and they both said there were
numerous times they could not reach the Lisbon Communication
Center, the first time. This delay makes the town liable for the results of
this delay.
I hope that the Chairman of the Town Council
or the Town Manager has invited Sheriff Samson or Martin Fournier to attend
this workshop to sort out what is true and what is false. The Town Council needs to have all the FACTS
before making any conclusions.
The primary focus should be on improving the quality
of life of our people by having Androscoggin County Dispatch or another Public
Safety Answering Point (PSAP) provide dispatch to Lisbon. This would
mean that when a request for emergency services (911 calls) is received the 911
operator will immediately contact our First Responders and not have to relay
the call to the Lisbon Communication Center.
The current system puts our
people’s lives at risk. Eliminating the middle process expedites the
process and gets our First Responders on the scene more quickly. In an emergency, time is the most critical
factor.
There is another advantage to
having Androscoggin County Dispatch dispatching our First Responders and that
is the elimination of the Lisbon Communication Center saving the town
approximately
$200,000.00 tax dollars! This is a significant cost savings for the
community.
Call
you Councilors and ask to have representatives of the County attend this
workshop so the community gets ONLY FACTS and not misinformation.
Larry Fillmore