East Hampton Town continues to make investments in its dispatch capabilities, with the town board most recently approving a $1.5 million bond issue for improvements to its dispatch center on July 3.
The ramp-up began at the board’s April 2 meeting, when it hired five new dispatchers for $58,129 annually each, not including benefits.
The $1.5 million will go to the renovation and expansion of the existing building, which is 20 years old.
The investments come ahead of Jan. 1, 2026, when East Hampton Village, which has handled dispatch for the town since the inception of the 911 service in the 1990s, will no longer do so. The town and village couldn’t come to an agreement on contract terms for the service ahead of a May 1 village deadline.
It will be the first time that the
town will be handling fire and emergency medical service calls from its headquarters.
Currently, when a call comes into the village dispatch center, it is screened. If it’s only for the town police and doesn’t involve either fire or E.M.S. services, it is transferred to the town dispatch center. “On average, the decision to transfer, based on detailed data from the system, takes about 50 seconds,” wrote East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo.
“The village never provided any dispatch services for the town police, only call answering and transfers, which they were contractually obligated to do under the County P.S.A.P. [public safety answering point] agreement,” he wrote.
Chief Sarlo said the upgrades to the “radio room” have been planned for over a year and that an engineering study had been completed last year. One addition was for an extra workstation “as we work through the process of taking back primary 911 call answering.”
However, the wiring, HVAC systems, furniture, and fixtures “all needed upgrades, with additional improvements for safety and security as well,” the police chief wrote in an email.
The five hires in April allowed the Police Department to add an additional dispatcher on each shift, which “will allow us to handle the increase in call volume, and adjust to the additional duties of transferring 911 or dispatching fire and ambulance as needed moving forward,” he wrote.
There are now 17 members of the dispatch staff making up five squads of three dispatchers and two supervisors who rotate and work flexible schedules. That staffing level is on par with what the village employs.
“Over all, our call volume has not increased much over the past five to seven years, and is holding somewhat steady,” wrote Chief Sarlo. “Obviously, about 20 years ago, with the proliferation of cellphones, overall call volume into both 911 and regular police lines increased drastically. 911 hang-up calls continue to be problematic, as people tend to grab their cellphone or hold the buttons or simply misdial the area code of a call and it triggers 911, but those have even leveled off in the past few years, dropping to a five-year low in 2024.”
Last year, East Hampton Village handled about 12,500 calls. It will continue to dispatch for village residents, and it signed two-year contracts to continue to serve as the fire and E.M.S. dispatcher for Amagansett, Montauk, and Sag Harbor.
“The process moving forward after Jan. 1, will now have our dispatchers transferring over the fire and E.M.S. calls for those districts which have remained in contract with the village, while holding onto our town police and fire and E.M.S.-related calls for the districts which come over to our dispatch room,” explained Chief Sarlo.
“This is how most municipalities function, and these changes are simply a reversal of the process and nothing new or out of the ordinary for countywide fire and E.M.S. dispatching. There is no cause for concern for residents that their 911 call experience or response time of emergency services will be affected in this reversal.”
