Town of New Hartford NEW YORK

Central Dispatch Center History

The New Hartford Central Dispatch Center was established in the summer of 1991. It brought together all emergency services in the Town of New Hartford under one centralized communications center. Prior to its creation, dispatching of emergency services was handled separately by the various agencies operating in the town. This "patchwork" of dispatching methods made inter-agency communications difficult at best. Also, dispatching for the fire departments usually involved private citizens literally working out of their home. The private answering service although adequate at one time, was now being outpaced by the increased requests for assistance.

In the early 90's, Oneida County had begun to revisit the idea of instituting 911 service in the county. After much time and effort, Oneida County did activate a countywide Enhanced (E-911) 911 system in December 1995. This giant leap forward provides every resident, business and visitor in the county a single number to call for easy access to help in an emergency. Enhanced 911 utilizes the latest technology to route to caller to the nearest appropriate Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) based on the location of the telephone. New Hartford Central Dispatch is a PSAP for Oneida County 911. All phone, computer and recording equipment necessary for providing E-911 to the residents of New Hartford is funded through the county’s 35¢ surcharge levied on your phone bill.

In addition to the Town Agencies we dispatch for, we now contract with the Villages of Whitesboro and Yorkville to provide dispatching for their fire departments. The town has also enacted a shared services agreement with the Town of Kirkland for Animal Control effectively doubling the territory Central Dispatch answers for in animal cases. Over 60,000 calls for service are handled annually. Better than 80% of those calls are for “non-emergency” calls. In fact, only approximately 4,000 calls or 6.7% of our calls received come in on 911 lines.