HANCEVILLE — First-response dispatchers at Hanceville will soon be among the county’s first to adopt a communication technology that’ll help make their work less stressful — while assuring residents better response timing on emergency calls.

Through the grant-awarding efforts of the Cullman County E-911 Board, Hanceville and other area agencies have been awarded funding to purchase new consoles with “toning capabilities” to replace older, less efficient equipment at public safety answering points (PSAPs), or dispatch call centers, throughout the county.

The Hanceville City Council signed off on accepting the grant at its regular meeting this week, which come with a ceiling of $90,000 to be applied toward two new consoles at Hanceville’s police dispatch office. Blake Burns, the police department’s 911 communications supervisor, said the actual cost of the system will likely come in slightly under the full grant amount.

Burns also said the new equipment, once adopted by other county agencies, will allow all local emergency dispatchers to function faster and with less adjustment in the event of a major emergency that requires moving personnel to other locations.

“With this system, if something major were to happen and one of my people were to need to go, say, to Cullman City dispatch, we could use the same radios because both locations would be relying on the same equipment,” Burns explained.

“It’s a really welcome change and a really good system — especially with everyone in the county knowing how to use it,” he added, noting the city’s six dispatchers are eager to de-clutter their working space by streamlining with the more versatile new gear, when it arrives.

“When I told my dispatchers that we were cleared for the grant, they were excited. It will make their jobs a lot easier, and that’s something that carries forward to the person on the other end of the line who’s making that emergency call. It will consolidate several computers into one, and just streamline the way that we’re able to do things. And it frees up a lot of room in our dispatch area.”

Burns said the new toning boards, which also feature a mobile component that will allow up to three dispatch operations to be deployed in the field when needed, are expected to go online at Hanceville sometime shortly after the start of the new year.