With staffing shortages and forced OT, relief has arrived for Brown County 911 dispatchers

Brittany Barham is one of five contract dispatchers working under a six month contract to help Brown County deal with staffing shortages and forced overtime in its 911 center. PC: Fox 11 Online

GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — After months of staffing shortages and complaints about forced overtime, relief has finally arrived for Brown County 911 dispatchers.

The county has hired contract workers to help fill the void.

Brittany Barham is one of five contract dispatchers who started working in the the Brown County 911 center last month.

“I decided to become an independent contractor just to travel and help people out because I’ve actually been a first responder for 11 years,” she said.

But Barham isn’t just helping people on the other end of the call. She’s also coming to the rescue of the current staff in the Brown County 911 center.

“Obviously, we’ve had some openings and we’ve had a lot of overtime. Our team has worked a lot of overtime, but we also wanted to bring in a resource to help with that — and that’s what the contract dispatchers would do, is to assist our team and lessen that burden for the team,” said Chancy Huntzinger, Brown County’s director of public safety communications.

To combat these staffing issues as the 911 center continues to try and hire for its nearly two dozen vacancies, the county decided to bring in contract dispatchers to help lighten the load.

The board authorized a little more than $400,000 in funding to bring in six dispatchers for six months. Five started working in August and a sixth is expected in town soon.

Huntzinger said, “The cost is going to be a bit more than that if you were to hire and bring them in. However, we were able to train them as far as the little bit of local training that’s required. We were able to do that quickly and they were able to fill those positions much quicker than if we brought somebody in.”

While they’re working in a new community, the job is the same. The contractors are already certified and trained, having experience working in other dispatch centers before coming to Brown County.

Their ability to hit the ground running versus going through months of training is a huge bonus.

“It’s been great to have five additional, trained dispatchers that have been here. It’s eased the burden on our team from the overtime that they’ve been getting, and just to have somebody that already knows what they’re doing. It’s been great for them,” added dispatcher Katie Hendrickson.

And while it’s too early into the contract to see if it will need to be extended, the county says that is always a possibility.