(VIDEOS) A STARK COUNTY GOV'T "DEMOCRACY IN ACTION" WORK SESSION GETS ANSWERS & GENERATES SOLUTIONS FOR 9-1-1 CALL RECEIVING FAILURE?

STARK COUNTIANS CAN NOW REST EASIER THAT THERE WILL NOT BE A REPEAT FAILURE?

UPDATED:  11:45 AM

VIDEOS

STARK CO. COMMISSIONERS

CONDUCT INQUIRY

ON

WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE

FOR

10/13/2013 

9-1-1 CALL-IN GLITCH

PRIMARY PARTICIPANTS

• Commissioner Tom Bernabei
• Commissioner Janet Creighton
• Paul Stoffels of AT&T
• Andy Kopystynsky of AT&T
• Jeroen Witte of Cassidian
• Director Tim Warstler of Stark EMA
• Joe Concatto, Project Mgr. Stark 9-1-1
• Tracy Houge, Jackson Twp Fire Chief
• John Bacon, North Canton Fire Chief
• Bruce McAllister, SC Sheriff Dir of Info Svcs

 =========================================

TIM WARSTLER

STARK EMA DIRECTOR

ON

THE

OCTOBER 6TH

GLITCH 

======================================== 

If a Stark Countian had a emergency between the approximate hours of 9:30 through Noon on Sunday, October 6th, there was a very high probability that any 9-1-1 emergency calls to the Canton Communications Center and the Stark County Sheriff Department Call Center were going to go "unanswered!"

Of course, most of us were unaffected.

But if you were one of the affected, it could have been "a matter of life and death."

Plaudits go, quite naturally, to those folks in the loop of emergency call receiving for Stark County who identified the shutdown and took remedial measures as soon as they possibly could.

A Stark County Political Report "Hats Off" to those Stark County based fire, police and administrative officials who acted quickly.

Once an incident ("problems do happen") like the one of the 6th occur, it is important to find out:

• why it happened?
• who is responsible?
• what is the remedy for making sure it never happens again? and
• who has the responsibility to implement the fix?

One way answers to these questions generally come is because someone in the day-in, day-out media digs, digs and digs some more in a fevered quest to ferret out the why, who, what and who questions set forth above.

Another way is for government to conduct an open to the public thoroughgoing inquiry meeting.

Before the election of Democrat Thomas Bernabei and Republican Janet Creighton to the Stark County Board of Commissioners, it was likely that no such meeting would have ever crossed the minds of the collective former boards of commissioners who have served the Stark County public.

With their election in November, 2010 and being in office as a tandem as of January 1, 2011, the two then-neophyte commissioners declared that the board was not meeting nearly enough and to boot needed to institute work sessions in which they could do far ranging scrutiny of anything connected in any way to Stark County government operations.

Since the meeting began in 2011, the commissioners have used the work sessions to delve deeply into Stark County government and take much needed corrective action for problems identified as being such, or, alternatively, to press those county officials who are charge of the problematic item(s) to apply a fix.

With the October 6th incident and Stark County government's prime role in providing for the safety and general welfare of Stark Countians, the commissioners called a work session meeting for November 18, 2013 in which all the "prime-players" in the 9-1-1 call receiving outage were called to account.

And that included players from the private sector (mainly AT&T) who contract with various aspects of county government to provide essential emergency communications services.

The Stark County Political Report was at the work session and recorded almost all (missed the first few minutes because The Report was interviewing a previous work session participant) of the commissioners' generated inquiry.



The key player in the provision of emergency services to Stark Countians is Tim Warstler who has the official title of being the director of the Stark County Emergency Management Agency.

Here is a video of a SCPR interview with him following up on some of the points made by participants as seen in the video above.



All-in-all, the Stark County Political Report believes that Stark Countians should be highly impressed and pleased that the Stark County commissioners did dig deep in their November 18th work session into the October 6th failure in their quest to get answers and provoke fixes so that none of us will ever experience needing emergency help - which could be a "life or death" matter - only to find that "the 9-1-1 call receiving/dispatch system" is down.

Many of us complain when government fails.  But do not give "credit where credit is due" when government works.

The November 18th meeting is a concrete example of government succeeding in fixing accountability where it lies and to do so in a transparent, effective (results producing) way.

Kudos! to the Stark County commissioners!!!