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24 October 2008

Here’s why you should vote for the OES-911 bond

Bond campaign yard sign

Simply put, I recommend approving the $6.9 million bond because it will underwrite the consolidation of Flathead County’s 911 dispatch and Office of Emergency Services (OES) operations under a single roof and a single command, thereby creating a whole that is greater — much greater — than the sum of its parts. That will bring two major benefits: (1) swifter and surer responses to emergency calls, and (2) greater administrative and operational efficiencies.

Swifter & surer responses

Currently, all 911 calls in Flathead County are routed to the county’s call center, where dispatchers assess the information and either send county resources (sheriff or fire) on their way, or route the caller to a 911 center in Kalispell, Whitefish, or Columbia Falls, where the assessment is repeated before help is dispatched. That slows response times by a minute or two in situations in which a minute or two can be the difference between disaster or success. The system is better than no system, but it’s not nearly as good as it can and should be.

Putting all 911 operations under one roof in a building equipped with modern communications equipment will eliminate the two-step assessment speedbump. And the new equipment will be superior to the old. In his talking points memo (PDF 176k), Mark Peck puts it this way:

The new Computer Aided Dispatch program will:

General history of unified emergency numbers.

Administrative & operational efficiencies

All of OES’s operations, equipment, and supplies will be moved to the Stillwater building. Right now, the OES offices are separate from the county’s 911 center, and equipment and supplies owned by OES are scattered over hell and gone, which lengthens response time and increases the probability of damage or theft. OES, for example, owns a sophisticated mobile command and control center worth a quarter of a million dollars that has no permanent home and actually sits outside during part of the year. The current system is a plan for disaster.

Unified command of communications and operations

Consolidating the 911 center and OES operations and equipment at the Stillwater site puts both operations under a single command. That probably saves a full time position, but more important, it eliminates the friction and imperfect coordination inherent in the current system. In this situation, it’s better to have a captain and executive officer on board one big boat than trying to coordinate several smaller boats, each with its own captain.

Capacity for growth is built into the consolidated center

Government officials, always aware of how hard it is to fund capital improvements, sometimes build for today and leave dealing with the future to the next administration. That’s not the case here. The Stillwater building is big enough that growing demands on the system can be accommodated by adding dispatching stations and offices through interior modifications for the next decade or two.

And demand is growing — both in events for which a response is required, and in the number of calls received per event. Just for Flathead County’s 911 operation, the annual number of incidents has almost doubled since 2003. And thanks to the ubiquity of cell phones, a traffic accident at a busy intersection, to cite an example, might be called in by ten to 15 different witnesses.

The following graphs illustrate the situation:

Graph 1 displays the upward trend of incidents for which a fire engine, ambulance, or patrol car must be dispatched. Note the sinusoidal nature of the rising trend line. The X-axis plots time, but the number of responses is certainly a function of the number of people present in the Flathead, with a seasonal peak in summer. Law enforcement accounts for approximately 85 percent of the dispatches.

Graph 2 displays the same data in a different way, using a notched box and whiskers plot that displays month-to-month variations. In this plot, the diamonds in the boxes display the mean, and the notches display the median. The whiskers bound the 5th and 95th percentiles. (I’m sometimes asked what application I use to produce notched box plots. It’s Citrin. My primary graphing application, however, is Kaleidagraph.)

Graph 3, produced by OES, is a line graph that shows how the number of incidents per month peaks in mid-summer.

An outstanding location for the new building

A better location for the new building could not have been found. It’s in northwest Kalispell, just east of the Stillwater Road, near the new headquarters for the Flathead National Forest and the soon-to-be-finished local headquarters for Montana’s state lands operation.

Many commentators, myself included, have remarked that the new OES operations and 911 center would be high and dry in the worst imaginable circumstance, which is the catastrophic rupture of Hungry Horse Dam (highly improbable). That’s important, but the synergistic benefits of the campus effect deriving from the proximity of the county, state, and federal operations headquarters is at least as important, perhaps more so. One obvious example is that the three agencies can, if they wish, share a single helicopter pad.

Equally important, the location provides unobstructed line of sight to radio repeater installations on Big Mountain to the north, Blacktail Mountain to the south, and numerous sites to the east and the mountains to the east. Eventually, I think, satellite relays will replace ground stations, but for now two-way radio, supplemented by cell satellite phones, is the primary means of tactical communications:

The multi-million dollar radio enhancement project is part of a statewide communications network that of which Flathead County is a significant partner. The Interoperable Montana project is assisting the county by funding a new “trunked” radio system that will address the over utilization of available channels and rebuild a large portion of the communication tower system to include new tower systems on Big Mountain, Blacktail Mountain and the Kalispell City Water tower. This program is primarily funded through state and federal grants. (Italics added.)

$6.9 million is the highball estimate

The authors of the bond issue insist that $6.9 million is the high bound for the project, and exude confidence that the the final cost will be less than the authorized spending limit. They don’t want to be in a position where they have to ask for more money. I commend that approach, and wish more governmental entities would adopt it. That said, my experience suggests that costs have a way of consuming all of the money allocated for a project. I think most or all of the money will be spent. But, it will be well spent.

Notes on the building design

For the layman, some aspects of the building’s design seem exotic and expensive, but are logical given the need to keep operating in a crisis:

Air filtration. Particulates — the principal components of a smoke plume — will be filtered out by the climate control system, thereby protecting equipment and staff. But the filters will not stop gases or microbes.

Back-up power. The uninterruptible power supply has a battery bank that will last several hours. Backing up the UPS are two generators, each sufficient to supply all power needs, with a two or three day supply of fuel. I’d be more comfortable with a seven-day fuel supply, but that’s not an question that really has a bearing on whether or not to vote for the bond issue.

Defenses against intruders. The design calls for windows of bulletproof glass, barriers to stop vehicles trying to ram the building, and other measures to repel those bent on no good. Those features probably don’t increase the cost more than a percent or two, and it’s hard to argue that they’re not necessary. An unhinged individual certainly could create a problem — witness the rampage by bulldozer in Granby, CO. Still, I wonder whether these defenses are in part a reaction to 9/11 and an unreasonable fear of terrorism.

Earthquake resistance. I asked Mark Peck how powerful an earthquake, using the Richter scale, was the building designed to withstand. He passed my question on to CTA, the architectural and engineering firm responsible for the design work: “I had a question regarding equake resistance in the design and they wanted to know if it was equated to the Richter Scale, your thoughts?”

CTA’s answer:

There is somewhat a correlation...

The Building Code recognizes different locations, known as ground motion maps, as constituting the risk factor for seismic activity given historic recorded data and evidence potential. For example, parts of the west coast, areas around Yellowstone Park and regions along the Rocky Mountains have some of the highest ground motion factors. The type of soils, micro-site factors within these areas, along with the type of occupancy the structure houses also play a factor on how the structural engineer must design the facility to resist earthquakes. Our Flathead County location and anticipated soil conditions of the proposed 9-1-1 Center site have some pretty stringent seismic design criteria.

That answer is sufficient qualitatively, but not quantitatively. What does “pretty stringent seismic design criteria” mean (besides “we don’t want to put a number on it”)?

Western Montana is in a high risk zone for earthquakes. According to the August, 2007, Update to the State of Montana Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan and Statewide Hazard Assessment:

An earthquake of magnitude 8 or larger on the Richter Scale is termed a great earthquake. Fortunately, Montana has not experienced a great earthquake in recorded history. A great earthquake is not likely in Montana but a major earthquake (M 7.0 – 7.9) occurred near Hebgen Lake in 1959 and dozens of active faults have generated M 6.5 – 7.5 during recent geologic time.

According to a USGS history of earthquakes in Montana, a Richter 5.5 earthquake hit in the mountains approximately 15 miles east of Bigfork on 31 March 1952. Shocks were felt in a 91,000-square-kilometer area that included Kalispell. Seventeen years later,

A magnitude 4.7 earthquake in the Flathead Lake area on April 1, 1969, caused damage and reached intensity VII at Big Arm, Dayton, and Proctor. Some damage was also noted in the Lake Mary Ronan area and a water well near Polson went dry. Several wells in the Proctor area increased their flow or became muddy. The shock was felt over 26,000 square kilometers and was followed by at least 21 felt aftershocks from April 1 to April 24. The strongest aftershock, on April 5, reached intensity V at Lake Mary Ronan. Over 325 minor aftershocks were reported felt from May 1969 through December 1971, mainly in the Big Arm - Polson area.

Given that history and the geology of the area, it seems to me that the forces the building should be constructed to withstand could be given a Richter number — and that it probably should be 7 to 7.5.

Will it pass?

I have my doubts. It’s a good project, but asking the voters to approve it during the onset of an economic downturn unmatched since the Great Depression may be asking too much. Even if the economy were booming, the bond issue may have gotten too late a start, leaving too little time to persuade the voters to approve the measure.

Finally, I’m not sure the Flathead Business and Industry Association’s political action committee was the best entity to handle the cheerleading duties. The FBIA PAC also backs Republican candidates for the legislature, and in Whitefish has gotten crosswise with the electorate for distorting Democratic Rep. Mike Jopek’s record on SB-547. Jopek is popular in Whitefish. He’ll be re-elected by a convincing margin, the FBIA PAC’s support for John Fuller notwithstanding. That might cost the 911 bond votes in Whitefish. A separate organization should have been formed to support the 911 bond.