By Ryan Hutton, The Berkshire Eagle
Original publication date: April 20, 2011

Adams, Ma. — A pair of Adams Police dispatchers are speaking out before voters at Town Meeting whether to keep the town’s emergency services dispatch center or farm it out to a countywide agency to save money.

The dispatchers — two of three full-timers — say they know the small town and its residents.

“We know family medical histories. We know if an older person has been taken to the hospital four times for a heart attack,” dispatcher John Pansecchi said. “That’s information to pass on to the ambulance service, and we can do it without quizzing a panicked family member when they call.”

The Selectmen estimate that closing the town’s dispatch center could save nearly $200,000 annually, while it would cost about $20,000 a year to contract with the regional dispatch center operated by the Berkshire County Sheriff’s Office.

If the town were to contract with the regional dispatch center, it’s not clear if its future assessments would increase or if the Alert Hose Company and Adams Ambulance Service would need to pay additional dispatching fees. As it stands, the fire and ambulance departments are separate entities with “handshake agreements” for Adams Police dispatch services.

The Selectmen are putting the question before the Town Meeting in June, while the Finance Committee said it will hold out for more information about changing the arrangement before making any recommendation.

Dispatcher Anthony Piscioneri said that all three dispatchers — the third being Tom Romaniak — are members of the Alert Hose Company and work closely with the police department. The dispatchers are based at the police station.

Piscioneri said they save an incident commander time by calling the electric or gas company in the event of a fire or accident in between radio calls. That allows the person in charge on the scene to concentrate on making sure a fire is put out safely or a person is removed from a wreck carefully.

“Do the sheriff’s dispatchers know that a few houses down from the DPW garage is a little, barely paved road called Evens Street?” Pansecchi said. “It goes to a single house where the Norcross family lives. That’s the stuff we know.”

“We have Summit Street, Summit Lane, Summit Avenue in town,” Piscioneri added. “We know the difference between all of them.”

Piscioneri said having that personal knowledge of the town and its people comes in handy. “It all goes back to the question of ‘can you put a price tag on knowing your town and your people?'” he said.

Said Pansecchi, “We don’t have three major incidences going on all at once — one in South County, one in North County and one in Pittsfield. We don’t have to tell a fire chief to hold on at the scene of a fire while we take another call. ? That’s not saying anything against the sheriff’s dispatchers. I’ve got a lot of respect for them and the job they do, but they’re already dispatching for 23 communities.” 

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