November 15,2018-
The City of Visalia is in discussions with three other jurisdictions who want to co-use the new VECC building,Visalia’s state-of-the art emergency dispatch center. So says Visalia City Manager Randy Groom who details that Tulare County as well as the cities of Tulare and Porterville want to see if there is room for their emergency operations in the new $23 million,19,000sf complex.
“These agencies are all agreeing to help pay for a study to determine how many staff and departments could work in the VECC” says Groom. The agencies know they could come up empty, with a determination that there is not the room to accommodate all of them, he adds.
The Visalia City Council will take up the idea up just before Thanksgiving and Groom expects the study to not take too long.
Located at 420 N. Burke St in east Visalia, the Visalia Emergency Communication Center (VECC) is already the the permanent home for 911 Dispatch, Fire Administration, the City’s Emergency Operation Center, the Traffic Management Center, and the City’s secure Data Center for Information Services. The building opened in September 2017.
Groom says Visalia uses perhaps 80% of the building’s space but with pending plans to build more at the Civic Center, the future might allow some options to shuffle staff and make room. An example could be fire administration he says.
The two-story VECC brims with $6 million in sophisticated electronic, communications and technology equipment and software including computer-aided dispatch and record management systems (CAD/RMS), a secure data center, and uninterrupted power supply (UPS) rooms. It operates 24 hrs a day.
“We’ve talked about co-using dispatch facilities with other jurisdictions for years” but now that Visalia has built this new center, multiple agencies appear ready to be part of it, he says.
Tulare County is an example, looking to get their emergency operation out of the old jail building shoe horned into the basement, a similar scenario that Visalia faced when it designed this complex. Clearly, first responders and their dispatchers don’t want to be flooded out of their emergency center. The VECC is built to withstand at least a 7.9-magnitude earthquake.
Even with just everyday emergencies, this place is busy. In 2017, the Communications Unit handled 153,701 calls for service. Of those, 130,931 were Police calls for service, 15,650 were Fire calls for service, and 7,120 were Animal Control related calls. Additionally, a total of 79,662 9-1-1 calls were received.
Groom says the city council is considering what building might be next in the Civic Center area adding that Visalia may sell off some land “ on the bookends” of the mostly vacant area that used to be Visalia’s old rail yard.