COMMISSIONERS APPROVED NAME CHANGE OF CURRENT BRENHAM EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS

  

A discussion of changing the name of the Washington County Public Safety Answering Point jurisdiction from “Brenham Emergency Communications” to Washington County 911 was one of the topics discussed during a meeting of the Washington County Commissioners Monday morning.

The Commissioners met this morning due to due to a majority of the Commissioners’ Court members attending the South Texas County Judges and Commissioners Conference in Beaumont.

The commissioners also approved the granting Justice of the Peace Precinct 2 the authority to purchase a laptop utilizing Justice of the Peace Technology Funds. The laptop will replace a very out-of-date desktop and another laptop in the office. The new laptop will take the place of both.

Also presented were the Washington County 911. May is going down as the busiest month ever for the Washington County EMS system, and nearly 78 percent of the calls received into 911 in May are from cell phones. Other methods of accessing the 911 System are currently in the works, and will be publically announced at the end of summer, or early fall.

The monthly EMS report was also presented. There was a reduction in response times across all parameters since the ACP was placed in the Burton area. According to the report, there has been over an 80% reduction in response time for the Burton City limits, and 70% of all the 911 calls in District 3, there was an ACP Paramedic in the district.

The EMS is still working to get the response time under 60 seconds. This involves the time from receiving the call, to help being dispatched.

Eighty-six percent of the calls received to 911 were within the City, with 14 percent coming within the county. So far in 2015, 654 calls have been received into 911. For 2014, there were 595 for the entire year, and only 407 for 2013, with the average being 552 in any given year.