E-911 board examines options as funds run out to continue mapping project

By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette

Wednesday, Jan. 16, 2013, 2:20 p.m. — With funds running out to pay for continued work to complete GPS mapping Nelson County to meet state requirements, the Nelson County E-911 Dispatch Board discussed its options at its monthly meeting Tuesday afternoon at the Nelson County Sheriff’s Office.

Completing the mapping is a requirement for the dispatch center to achieve Phase II compliance. Meeting compliance will allow the dispatch center to locate a cell phone caller within 350 feet. Phase II compliance means the dispatch center will continue to collect annual 911 cellphone fees.

The board has been paying Joe Mattingly for his work as a mapping consultant and he has been working for months to map more than 30,000 address as part of the project to create accurate GPS maps of the county. In June 2012, Mattingly’s contract was extended until Dec. 31, 2012, though it was clear at that time his work would not be done by the end of his contract.

Mattingly has been working since Dec. 31 without a contract. The board approved extending Mattingly’s contract Tuesday, at first until the end of January before revising that vote to extend it through the end of February 2013. Board member Joe Prewitt noted that the board is nearly out of funds to pay Mattingly. Mattingly’s contract has been paid by a line of credit the board was given from Nelson Fiscal Court. With the line of credit nearly depleted, Prewitt told the board he did not want to go back to Nelson Fiscal Court and ask for another extension.

In addition to the address work Mattingly has been working on, the process will also include creating address block ranges to coordinate the addresses and identify out-of-sequence addresses, and also establishing the center line of every street and highway in the county.

The lack of proper GPS mapping is what leads to GPS errors. “That’s why if you put in 214 Plaza Drive in a Tom Tom (GPS), you can wind up a mile and a half down the road,” Mattingly said. The errors are annoying to travelers, but can cost lives by delaying first-responders in an emergency.

EMS Director and E911 board member Joe Prewitt expressed his frustration over the onggoing need for Mattingly’s continued services and the lack of funding the board has available to continue his work.

“This is an ongoing, continual project,” Prewitt said. “We’re just kidding ourselves by extending the contract a month or two and its not going to get us where we need to be.”

Prewitt noted that the board would not want to have the mapping unfinished when the Commonwealth Mobile Radio Service (CMRS) board comes to audit the dispatch agency’s progress.

Board member and Bardstown Police Chief Rick McCubbin agreed that changes to the mapping information will likely be an ongoing effort. “Somebody has to be available to do it,” he said.

Prewitt suggested the board sent a letter to agencies and participating local governments and advise them of the need to keep funding Mattingly’s work to achieve Phase II compliance.

“I’m at a loss here, I don’t know where we go from here,” Prewitt said. “We’re running out of money. If we extend Joe’s contract through March, we’ll be out of money and (the mapping project) still won’t be done.”

Mattingly or someone else needs to hired full-time to take care of the mapping, Prewitt said. “I think that’s going to take an official letter from the board chairman to inform them we are running out of time and running out of money.”

Sheriff Steve Campbell noted that the mapping work impacts every agency in the county, not just law enforcement. Nelson County Dispatch Director Debbie Carter said that moving forward, the next generation of 911 requirements will require accurate mapping.

The board voted to draft a letter that will describe the remaining mapping work that is needed to achieve Phase II compliance and a timeline for its completion.

The board will meet next at 3 p.m. Feb. 19, 2013 in the conference room at Nelson County EMS, 1301 Atkinson Hill Ave., Bardstown.

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