Centre County salary board approves raises for 911 dispatchers
Though a salary study is being conducted on the Centre County government’s pay and is anticipated to be completed in the coming months, county officials said some departments need an increase now to help with recruitment, retention and to show appreciation.
That’s why the Centre County salary board approved a $2/hour increase Thursday for 911 dispatchers and supervisors who fill in as dispatchers when there are vacant shifts, effective Feb. 13.
Between ice storms and fires, Commissioner Steve Dershem said this past week is an example of how fundamental it is that the county has 911 dispatchers trained and staffed. Norman Spackman, director of emergency communications, said fires on Wednesday alone took four hours of staff time to manage. But while the job can be difficult, he said it’s an exciting one.
Spackman said there are eight vacancies in the department and at a previous commissioners meeting, he said employees worked as much as 700 hours of overtime in 2021, costing around $4,900. He said across the nation, 911 is suffering vacancies due to what the job entails.
Commissioner Mark Higgins said a lot of training goes into the job and hiring needs to happen now so the county is prepared for bigger events in the summer and fall.
“It’s not like you can hire a 911 dispatcher tomorrow and have them answering calls. I mean, they help people deliver babies, they walk people through administering CPR, in some cases when the citizens have never been trained to do it,” he said. “So if we’re going to have a staff ready for things like Arts Festival, football games and a lot of the other major, totally fun events we have here in Centre County, we’re going to need to begin aggressively hiring people over the next couple of months such that they’re fully trained by the time we have tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people coming to enjoy this wonderful county.”
During Thursday’s commissioners meeting, the board approved an extension to the recruitment incentive for corrections officers at the Centre County Correctional Facility retroactive to Dec. 1, 2021, through June 30. It’s similar to a hiring bonus; new hires will receive $1,500 paid out over time once they’ve been with the county for a certain amount of time.
Commissioners unanimously approved that and extending the employee referral program for the corrections officers and dispatcher positions. They suggested the human resources office bring back other positions in the county that could benefit from these incentives.
Because corrections officers are working very closely with many individuals who have had COVID-19, all employees in the correctional facility on payroll as of Feb. 18 will also receive a one-time hazard payment of $800. Margaret Gray, county administrator, said while corrections employees have done a great job, omicron has been harder to contain and there have been additional cases of COVID-19 within the facility.
This story was originally published February 10, 2022 at 4:49 PM.
