ANTIGO — Tuesday night, the county board’s administrative and finance committee discussed the shortage of dispatchers currently fielding 911 calls for the Langlade County Sheriff’s Office.
At the meeting’s outset, Sheriff Mark Westen said other than one part-time dispatcher working limited hours, only four dispatchers work in the office full-time — including one trainee and one currently on leave. He said the reasons his office has been unable to hire and retain dispatchers vary.
“Of the last three hires that we had, we had one that resigned, just freely admitted, ‘I can’t do this, I’m not getting this, and I want to be honest with you.’ One we had to terminate, and one is still with us and doing well, but it’s too early to tell,” he said.
Langlade County Administrator Jason Hilger said that ideally, at least double the number of dispatchers currently working full time for the Sheriff’s Office are needed.
“Technically, perfectly staffed, you need two at the most, two per shift,” Hilger said. “So you need two every night. You need two every day. So that’s four for 24 hours, but because we run 24/7, which is seven days a week, you don’t need just four. You need at least eight. So eight’s a fine number. Nine would be great. Ten would be fine because it certainly allows you more vacations and sickness and illnesses and unplanned things.”
The low numbers made covering all shifts during each 24 hour day impossible, and starting in early May, Westen said night shift dispatching has been partially outsourced.
“In May, I believe 6th, [we] signed an agreement with Marathon County to assist us to provide dispatch services from their facility through a connection that was made so that they can log into one of their consuls over in the Marathon County dispatch center and remote access one of our consoles in our dispatch center, and in doing so, that has been a tremendous asset to our services that we can provide dispatching for our citizens here in Langlade County,” Westen said.
Despite the continued need to hire more dispatchers to work locally, the establishment of a backup brick and mortar dispatch center like the one the county now technically has through the agreement with Marathon County was overdue, Westen said.
“When we had our incident back last year in July, we lost our dispatching capabilities for a while. Back in 2019 we had two events — the lightning strike direct to this building wiped us out for several hours, and then the storm of 2019 also rendered our dispatching capabilities quite useless for several hours,” Westen said. “So now with that investment in the remote option to have Marathon County tap in and assist us in our times of need, that’s taken care of, so that was a critical piece of infrastructure that was needed to establish that redundancy for us.”
While county board members acknowledged the problem’s complexity — they noted, for example, that employee shortages in 911 dispatching centers exist in both neighboring counties and nationwide — some, such as District 13 Supervisor Bruce McDougal, expressed frustration that the hiring struggle has persisted despite the county board setting aside more funds last year to attract potential dispatchers.
“We wound up budgeting for a total of 12 dispatch staff. We couldn’t even get nine. We couldn’t even get six for that,” McDougal said. “Now we hear we’re down to single digits again. We needed five. The money that was supposed to go for the additional staff has been diverted to the remote help from Marathon County. And now we hear that we needed that as a redundant system anyway. So was that just a way to get the redundant system, or what’s going on here? What is the problem with attracting and keeping dispatchers in Langlade County? I understand this is a problem in a lot of other municipalities, but when we say it’s our problem, I feel that the county board has done a lot in trying to get this problem solved. We need to see something from the other side.”
Hilger, though, said the problem is not unique to Langlade County or even the dispatching industry.
“The truth is, every business, every industry is having trouble hiring quality employees. And I was on a phone call with a dozen county administrators: they’re all struggling finding dispatchers right now,” he said. “We increased the budget approximately $225,000 to combat our shortage of dispatchers. Basically, as the year developed, we didn’t really hire 9, 10, 11, and 12. We connected with Marathon County, so we’re using that increase to pay Marathon County to help with our labor shortage. Then we paid approximately $55,000 for software and internet connectivity to allow that support and redundancy.”
District 21 Supervisor Steve Maier suggested greater understanding of what might be souring the county dispatchers’ attitudes toward the job needed to be attained.
“Is it churn? Is it turnover? I’d like to know our last three years of turnover rate in dispatch compared to other counties — I’d like to be able to really know,” Maier said. “Because it looks like…we’re throwing money at the problem, and that’s not really solving it based on churn and turnover…Is something going on? Is it culture? Is it work ethic? Is it stress? To your point, maybe the money’s there, but if they’re working 80 hours a week, what quality of life do you have? So maybe we’re not taking into account the stress levels.”
District 17 supervisor and board chairman Ben Pierce said counties could solve each other’s shortages by combining into regional dispatching centers.
“We shouldn’t be competing with each other,” Pierce said. “We shouldn’t be competing with Marathon, Forrest, Lincoln. Put them all in one building. We’re not in direct competition. We just want to serve the public. We want to answer the phones. We want to be there when somebody’s needed.”
Westen called the proposal one that counties likely could not accomplish without “an act by the state legislature.” He also insinuated that the current dispatcher shortage facing the county was not necessarily complex, but simply difficult to solve.
“We need two butts in the chairs,” he said. “It’s that simple from my standpoint. We need two butts in the chairs, and we can’t do that.”
The need may be a pressing one, according to Westen, who stressed that Marathon County’s dispatching assistance is not permanent, which Langlade County Administrator Jason Hilger attributed at least in part to burnout the arrangement could be contributing to in that county as well.
“We had an hour long, very good conversation with Marathon County today. He said, ‘We will help you as long as you need it, but our staff are getting a little burned out.’ Even with all the overtime and the five dollar stipend and all that, their employees are just kind of like, ‘Done with it. We don’t want the hours,’” Hilger said. “Nonetheless, they’ll help as long as we need it. It’s still a great tool if our system crashes — it’s not money thrown away. Are we maybe going to get this long-term permanent solution out of it that maybe some of us, many of us thought we would? Probably not. But it’s still not a bad thing.”
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