A new community advisory board will focus on Sedgwick County 911. Here’s what to know
Sedgwick County will soon have a new community advisory board charged with providing input on the 911 system.
The 13-member board is expected to help develop recommendations related to the Emergency Communications department’s policies, procedures, training, recruitment and retention.
The advisory board is not authorized to take binding action on behalf of the county, and will instead report to the County Commission, which voted unanimously to establish it Feb. 7.
The resolution establishing the board states that “at the request of the Sedgwick County Board of County Commissioners or Sedgwick County Emergency Communications,” the board may “review specific emergency communications-related problems or situations.”
It’s not yet clear how much authority board members will have to obtain personnel records or trigger the review of potentially problematic incidents involving 911 employees.
The board’s origins predate heightened scrutiny of 911 after last October’s fatal Brookhollow Apartment fire. It stems instead from a recommendation of the Cedric Lofton task force, which proposed reforms to the government agencies that interacted with the 17-year-old on the morning of his fatal restraint at a county lockup facility in September 2021.
Those 58 recommendations were issued in April 2022. Emergency Communications Director Elora Forshee told commissioners formation of the advisory board was delayed while the department’s headquarters were remodeled and a new computer-aided dispatch system was implemented.
“We think that this is a great opportunity for our community to have some voice within the system, to be able to provide input, and then also we really want to leverage this team to help in community outreach, in recruitment,” Forshee said.
911 already has a first responder advisory board made up of local law enforcement, fire and EMS department leaders, and an Emergency Communications employee advisory board.
The new community advisory board will include one appointee from each of the five commission districts, three at-large county representatives, a Wichita representative, a Derby representative, one second- and one third-class city representative (recommended by the Sedgwick County Association of Cities), and one youth representative (age 16-19).
People who are interested in participating can apply through the county website at https://boards.sedgwickcounty.org/. The Emergency Communications advisory board had not yet been listed on the site as of Friday afternoon.
Board members will serve two-year terms. Sedgwick County spokesperson Nicole Gibbs said the goal is for members to be approved and the board to start meeting by the second quarter of 2024. Meetings will be held at least quarterly.
Forshee will serve as a non-voting member of the board. Asked who will set the agenda for meetings, Gibbs said Forshee, county commissioners and advisory board members will all have the ability to add agenda items “as long as they fit within the scope of the Board as outlined in the resolution.”
Forshee’s management of the department has been called into question in the months since the fatal apartment fire, when 911 dispatchers failed to communicate potentially lifesaving information about 22-year-old Paoly Bedeski’s location to firefighters on the scene and did not sound a second alarm that would have sent more firetrucks to the scene until 17 minutes after the request was made.
Sedgwick County and the city of Wichita are in the process of procuring an independent audit to review what went wrong during the fatal incident. County commissioners have remained supportive of Forshee publicly, including after 15 former 911 employees signed an open letter alleging deficient training and a toxic work culture in the department.
