BY ANDREAS YILMA
CITIZENS NEWS
NAUGATUCK — Borough police are looking to move their dispatch center within the police department for an overall upgrade.
The Board of Mayor and Burgesses approved a design agreement with Jacunski Humes Architects out of Berlin for schematic design cost estimating for a new central dispatch facility at the Naugatuck Police Department. The move was recommended by the Standing Building Committee.
Burgess and Standing Building Committee Chairman Bob Neth said the company specializes in the type of work with police and fire. The design is to get borough officials some hard numbers on what the actual cost of all the work will be.
The proposed plan is a project to upgrade and centralize the dispatch, Police Chief Colin McAllister said.
“We have the hardware, we have the infrastructure already in place as a police department to theoretically upgrade the town’s dispatch center and at one point or another, move into one centralized location,” McAllister said.
Police officials’ primary concern is the engineering aspect of the project, regarding the HVAC systems. The centralized dispatch would go into one room and they would have a shifting around of public access to the police department, McAllister added.
“A goal here is that our community room or our training room will be public access so that’s something we’re looking long term to try to have the public have access to the building when we have police commission meetings, outreach events because currently you have to walk inside the building. You have to get buzzed in,” McAllister said. “It’s not friendly. It’s not accommodating to the public and we’re looking to shift around the setup.”
The central dispatch would be moved to the training room and the training room would then move to the records division which has the public access when a member of the public walks into the building, to the right, Deputy Police Chief Daniel Norck said.
“A larger room for community events, we may even host more things in being a public access,” Norck said. “We can block off the back door into the Police Department.”
The records room is massive with only about two people working there and utilizing much less paper then in the past. They would move into the dispatch room, Norck added.
McAllister said the dilemma is when they plan to move the dispatch center from its current location to the back, police officials are concerned about the HVAC in that room because it’s underground which can contribute to the humidity levels.
The project is aimed to be carried out in a way where it could be expanded in the future, Mayor N. Warren “Pete” Hess said.
