NATCHEZ — Adams County and the City of Natchez plan to begin working side-by-side to provide 911 dispatching services to local residents.

The Adams County Board of Supervisors and the Natchez Board of Aldermen agreed Monday to consolidating the city and county’s 911 dispatches.

Currently, the Adams County Sheriff’s Office and the Natchez Police Department run two separate 911 dispatch offices. The 911 computer system can tell where the call is originating from and sends the call to either the police or the sheriff.

However, officials say there have been multiple reports of the calls being sent to the wrong place, resulting in transfer delays and being placed on hold.

Natchez alderman Mark Fortenbery said he had been placed on hold himself after dialing 911 recently.

NPD Chief Danny White said the two-office dispatch system had been misplacing calls and delaying response times, including response to the Mount Carmel Road murder investigation last month

“That call went to the sheriff, but should have gone to the police department,” White said.

Supervisor Mike Lazarus said the county was ready to absorb costs in order to sort out the problem.

“If we have to bear the brunt of the financial burden, I’m fine with that,” Lazarus said. “We need something that works.”

Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten said space existed in the sheriff’s office building to house a consolidated office.

“It can have its own budget, its own supervisor and four dispatchers,” Patten said.

The proposed office is in the basement, and already has the dispatch equipment set up.

Lazarus said it could be an ideal location, because it already had generator backup in place and would be safe from tornadoes.

Adams County Emergency Management Director Robert Bradford said simply combining the two offices into one room would do nothing to improve response times.

“You still have different dispatchers,” Bradford said. “It’s really the same thing.”

Bradford said the current system is working as expected.

“With the system we have in place, no data is lost and it takes 1.2 seconds to transfer calls,” Bradford said. “If you dial 911, it’ll go to either the sheriff or police. It would not display a busy signal.”

American Medical Response manager Tim Houghton, who oversees two AMR call centers, suggested reorganizing the dispatch office personnel to include call takers and dispatchers, who would have separate jobs.

Houghton said all calls, regardless of origin, could be answered by trained call-takers, who would stay on the line with the caller and type the information they receive into a computer database.

In the same office, dispatchers would read the information from the computers in real time and decide which law enforcement agency to dispatch to respond to the call.

Callers could stay in contact with the 911 call-taker, even while help is on the way.

“Going to a unified system would solve your problem, because call takers are trained differently from dispatchers,” Houghton said. “That’s the difference between what we currently have and what we’d like to see. More and more call centers are moving to (separate) call-takers and dispatchers.”

The boards informally agreed to pursue a unified dispatch office, staffed with separate call-takers and dispatch personnel, who would be employed by the E-911 board as opposed to either of the law enforcement agencies.

Natchez City Attorney Hyde Carby and Adams County Attorney Scott Slover will work together to draw up a formal agreement.

The board of supervisors moved to sign an interlocal agreement to allow the sheriff’s office to continue current operations in the short term.

Mayor pro tem Joyce Arceneaux-Mathis said the city’s signing of the agreement will be on the Feb. 9 meeting agenda, since the board of aldermen lacked a quorum to take action Monday.

Ward 2 Alderwoman Mary Lee Toles, Ward 3 Alderwoman Sarah Smith and Ward 5 Alderman Mark Fortenbery attended the meeting. Ward 6 Alderman Dan Dillard attended briefly, but left shortly after the meeting began.

The board of supervisors also heard from Adams County Justice Court and county constables on what could be done to increase collections of past-due fines.

Justice Court Judge Patricia Dunmore said efficiency had improved since she took office.

“I give them a choice,” Dunmore said. “You can get 90 days or you can tell me what you can pay every month. Most of the time they tell me what they can pay.”

County constables Adam Kirk and Willie B. Jones said they would begin knocking on doors to encourage people to come in and pay fines as they are able, or to arrest those who have bench warrants issued.

A 25-percent increase will be added to fines to pay for the constables’ services.

“I don’t want them to do it for free,” Lazarus said.

Lazarus said the money owed the county could be used for road projects and other needs.