HUBBARDSTON — Town officials have approved the Rutland Regional Emergency Communication Center’s plan to add the town of Warren to the center, which will save Hubbardston thousands of dollars.
Currently, the Communication Center serves Barre, Oakham, Rutland and Hubbardston.
However, it will expand to include Warren starting in January, which will save Hubbardston roughly $18,000 a year. Currently, the town spends $134,241 on dispatch, but after the savings begin the town will spend $116,502.
“There are no known drawbacks to adding Warren,” Director of Communications Michael Moriarty said. “There won’t be any change in service to any of the towns, and Hubbardston will have the same service.”
In order to address the additional calls, the Communication Center is hiring additional dispatchers in order to assure no change in service with the addition of Warren.
“We are happy to be realizing long-term savings due to the addition of Warren into RECC,” Board of Selectmen Chairman Dan Galante said. “We feel as though we vetted it thoroughly and asked all of the necessary questions to make sure the citizens of Hubbardston are unaffected by this merger.”
Hubbardston was the last town to approve Warren into the center.
With Warren added, the current capacity of the facility will be maxed out, but the center is still looking at options to allow future expansions that could save the towns even more money.
“We are looking at new locations to continue to grow,” Moriarty said. “The building next door to us actually, if we move into that we will be able to hold even more towns.”
With each town that is added to the center, there will be more overall savings for the towns already participating.
The Communications Center has also found additional savings in switching to Swift 911, swapping out Code Red, for recorded mass emergency calls. Swift 911 offers the same townwide calling services that CodeRed does, for about $7,000 less to the cost of each town using the center.
With Swift 911, the town is able to make wide-ranging calls for a number of scenarios, notably emergencies like floods or serious crime, but Swift 911 will also allow people to sign up for specific call lists, so they can be notified about non-emergencies like town meetings as well.
