In an emergency, it’s a message that callers don’t want to hear:

“Thank you for calling Douglas County 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing unexpectedly high call volumes. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered by the next available dispatcher.”

To make sure it doesn’t happen, the Lawrence City Commission will likely provide an extra $50,000 in funding for two new dispatcher positions in the 2004 budget. County Administrator Craig Weinaug says the money isn’t coming a moment too soon.

“I can’t guarantee someone will never be put on hold in an emergency,” Weinaug said. “But this is a good start.”

Douglas County dispatchers provide services for more than 20 local agencies, including Lawrence Police, the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office and Lawrence-Douglas County Fire & Medical. The city and county share the costs, with Lawrence contributing 66 percent and Douglas County chipping in 34 percent.

The new positions had been authorized for the 2003 budget year, but funding cuts to the county at the end of last year killed the proposal for three new dispatchers, Weinaug said. This year, the city again supported three new positions, but the county only authorized two.

“We still don’t have enough people to do the job that needs to be done,” said Jim Denney, director of Douglas County Emergency Communications.

With just 19 people running the 24-hour-a-day facility, overtime and burnout rates are high. Most dispatchers have to work extra shifts on the weekends or stay after they’ve worked their eight hours. And the job isn’t exactly low-stress.

“It takes a special kind of person to do this job,” said Amanda Moore, a five-year veteran.

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On a given day, Moore may have to talk to a suicidal subject while simultaneously dispatching police and Fire & Medical units to the scene and monitoring officers involved in dozens of situations. The pressure helps contribute to the department’s 20 percent to 30 percent turnover rate.

“We have a nearly state-of-the-art dispatch center,” Denney said. “That’s helped cut down the number of dispatchers we need.”

But even with technological advances, such as mobile dataports in police units and combined radio/telephone units, Denney estimated he would need six more dispatchers to fully staff the center. Even the two proposed for 2004 won’t help much next year.

“Right now, it takes about eight months to get them trained,” Denney said. “So if we hire in January … it’ll be September before they’re really helping.”

The two new positions will cost a little more than $72,000. They will bring Lawrence’s total to 21 full-time dispatchers, a number that still trails communities of similar size.

Denney said he would need 28 dispatchers to match the per capita ratio in Topeka and 39 to match Santa Fe, N.M. And Lawrence is still growing.

“Unless people stop needing police and fire and medical services, we’re still going to need more dispatchers,” Weinaug said.