Kingfisher County residents can expect no disruptions in 911 services while county commissioners search for a new administrator for the program, Heath Dobrovolny, board of county commissioners chairman said.

The search was triggered this week when Kingfisher County Sheriff Dennis Banther tendered his resignation as administrator of the program.

“The current dispatchers are very professional and the head dispatcher already makes the schedule and handles other administrative functions,” Dobrovolny said. “They will continue to do their jobs providing emergency police, fire and EMS dispatch 24/7 while we work to fill the position.”

Banther told the Times & Free Press that administering the 911 program requires more time and attention than he and his staff are able to devote while also fulfilling their other duties.

“Just managing our expanded jail facility and staff takes more than 40 hours per week and managing 911 really needs someone working another 40 hours,” he said. “It really needs someone who can dedicate the time to growing their knowledge and keeping up with changing state and federal mandates.”

“My administrative assistant (Tresa Jones) and I are both working additional hours each week in an attempt to keep things running within acceptable guidelines,” Banther wrote in his resignation letter to commissioners.

“I can no longer justify the additional duties and time, nor do I have anyone else on staff whom I can place in this role.”

The emergency dispatch service has operated under the auspices of the sheriff’s office since 2013, with three different administrators under the oversight of an independent 911 board.

When it became difficult to find volunteers to serve on the 911 board, county commissioners voted to assume oversight in 2020, when Banther took over administration as part of his duties.

“When we took over, it was upside down financially – not operating within its budget and basically bleeding money,” Banther said.

“So basically what commissioners wanted me to do was to bring discipline back to the financial side of it and to the employee side of it and we’ve done that.

“We’ve got it back to where funds are slowly growing each year and we have employees who are really dedicated to the job.”

Banther reduced staffing from “eight or nine full-time positions plus a part-timer” to the current six full-time dispatchers, he said.

“There’s an inner discipline with the current employees and you can tell they really love what they’re doing and they truly care about each other and making sure everything runs smoothly.”

The county 911 system provides fire and ambulance dispatch services to Dover, Omega, Loyal and Big Four fire departments, after-hours dispatch for Kingfisher fire and police departments and 24/7 dispatch for Okarche police and fire.

From July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020, the most recent year statistics are available, the 911 dispatch center answered 5,243 emergency calls, in addition to more than 20,000 “administrative calls,” Banther said.

He said administrative calls are nonemergency questions or requests.

The center also dispatches for Kingfisher County Emergency Management. The town of Hennessey has its own dispatchers for now but had approached the county late in the fiscal year about transitioning to the county system sometime in the future, Banther said.

Cashion police and fire is dispatched through Guthrie, he said.

The 911 operations center was moved from the courthouse annex to the Kingfisher County Criminal Justice Center once the new facility was built.

“We’re going to be there to help with the transition to a new administrator, no matter how long it takes, and we’ll still be there after that if there are questions or problems,” Banther said.

“We’re not abandoning 911; we just need someone in there to devote the time to manage the center properly.”

Once a new administrator is hired, that person will report directly to the board of county commissioners, Dobrovolny said.

“We’ll be interviewing outside applicants as well as existing employees who apply for the administrator’s job,” Dobrovolny said.

Banther said a huge part of the administrative function is record-keeping and collecting data for very detailed reports required by both state and federal regulations.