Shop LocalFriday, November 9, 2012
Zim Schwartze, former director of the Columbia/Boone County Office of Emergency Management, has been hired as a consultant to evaluate the Callaway County 911 call center, Callaway County Western District Commissioner Doc Kritzer said Thursday.
Zim Schwartze
Schwartze worked for the Columbia Police Department for 17 years and was promoted to police captain before she was transferred three years ago to head the Columbia/Boone County Office of Emergency Management, which includes the 911 call center.
“We are fortunate to be able to hire a temporary consultant who is experienced in not only the operation of a 911 call center but also as a police officer,” Kritzer said.
Schwartze is now available to do consulting because of a move earlier this year to trim $1 million from the Columbia city budget. In a city reorganization, the job Schwartze held was eliminated five months ago by Columbia City Manager Mike Matthes.
The city manager said the change was only a budget move. He said Schwartze has left the OEM operation in better shape than she found it. The former deputy director of the OEM agency was named to head the department.
Comments
oaklevel 6 months, 1 week ago
Well hopefully something good will come of this. She needs to interview each fire dept. It is getting ridiculous that we are here to provide a service to the tax payers, and our dispatch center is making that very difficult to fulfill. Of course the ones that get blamed are the firefighters as it takes us so long to get there. When in reality its EOC causing it. There are times (numerous lately) that it has been upwards of 10+ minutes (after the ambulance has been dispatched) before EOC will dispatch first responders to a call. A lot of those times the only way the first responders get dispatched is after the ambulance mentions something about first responders. In medical situations this is time that is very valuable. I know of an instance where it was 20 minutes before they dispatched for a cardiac arrest. The new radio system that has been installed for the fire departments is junk. We have to change to too many different towers to even get EOC to hear us. Another issue is the dispatchers dont pay attention to the fire departments. We arent as important as law enforcement apparently. I think its time for some MAJOR changes. There were some issues when Diemler ran EOC but no where near the issues we are having now.
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