Consolidation didn’t work

Everybody makes mistakes. It’s impossible to escape them, being human and all. We all pay a price for those mistakes, and depending what those mistakes are, the repercussions can be costly. 

For the Connecticut State Police, for instance, the cost of consolidating dispatch for its rural barracks in the far eastern and western parts of the state was somewhere around $3 million, according to the CSP Public Information Office (see Karen Bartomioli’s article, July 16). To her credit, when Commissioner Dora Schriro came to the Department of Safety and Public Protection in February of 2014, she took stock of the consolidation, which had recently been accomplished, and put a stop to any more changes associated with it. She also visited the barracks and spoke with those directly affected by the changes, which had included cut hours for public access to the barracks, locked doors and blue phones outside the troop for people to use if they needed assistance. Her reaction: reopen the barracks on a 24-hour basis, staffing them in what she clearly considered to be the best interest of public safety. 

Then, after careful analysis, in May of this year she announced that the consolidation would be reversed, going back to the system of all 11 barracks in the state being responsible for their own dispatch.

There were many objections raised to the dispatch consolidation of Troop A in Southbury and Troop B in North Canaan into Troop L in Litchfield, and they were noted in this newspaper’s editorial space. A major concern was the large geographic area covered by the three troops, and the dispatcher’s unfamiliarity with the roads of the other two troops’ coverage area. The roads in the western part of the state wend their way around hills and valleys that are often challenging for GPS directions to master. And the distances are long in between landmarks, making nighttime calls especially difficult and even dangerous for vehicles traveling over two-lane two-way roads trying to make it to an emergency as quickly as possible. 

Fears were expressed that the consolidation and cut hours were just steps being taken toward the ultimate goal of closing the outer barracks, such as Troop B. Would that have happened if Schriro hadn’t come in and changed direction after evaluating the situation? We have no way of knowing, but it is now encouraging to know that Troop B has a new commander, William R. Baldwin Jr., who has expressed a strong commitment to the Northwest Corner and to being a part of Troop B for a long time to come. Baldwin brings with him 30 years of experience in law enforcement and knows the area already, having served in Torrington at the beginning of his career. He told area selectmen at a recent Northwest Hills Council of Governments meeting that consolidation just wasn’t working in this situation, so amending it was the right thing to do.

Kudos to the State Police and the state of Connecticut for being willing to step back, objectively analyze the reality that dispatch consolidation had created and cut their losses, even though they were high. They put more importance on public safety than on avoiding embarrassment of having spent that $3 million on a project that just didn’t pan out. We can all take a lesson, and hope they do as well. But we should also thank them all for being adults about it and admitting their error. Next time let’s hope they will look at the objections and take them into consideration before spending $3 million of taxpayer money.

Whirlwind Railroad Days in Canaan

Kudos to all the many merchants and volunteers in North Canaan who did so much to make the once-again expanded Railroad Days a very full and exciting couple of weeks for all in the Tri-state region. There could not have been one more event packed into the schedule, and there was truly something of interest for everyone, of every age group and with any interest. Thank you to all who worked so hard to make North Canaan a destination for so many this year, but especially to John Lannen, who once again took the reins to make Railroad Days a success.