Emergency dispatch director resigning in Santa Fe after six months

May 14—Bernard "Buster" Brown stepped into the top job at the local 911 dispatch center, an agency that had struggled with high turnover rates and severe worker shortages, with a goal of turning it around.

A native New Yorker with more than 25 years of experience in dispatch centers, Brown said at the time he hoped to make the Santa Fe Regional Emergency Communications Center "the model for not just this area, but the model for the state of New Mexico."

Earlier this week — a little more than six months after he took on the director's job — Brown informed Santa Fe County officials he plans to resign.

County data shows the staffing problems he faced when he came on board persist.

He submitted his letter of resignation May 9, county spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said, and will exit the post June 8. The county will use the 30-day window as a transition period to explore replacement options, she added.

It's unclear why Brown is stepping down. Efforts to reach him were unsuccessful.

Hart declined to cite a reason for Brown's resignation, noting it is against county policy to discuss personnel matters publicly.

Brown said in a November interview he intended to take a hands-on approach to running the center, where nearly half of the 51 positions were vacant, including 22 dispatchers.

Hart said Friday those staffing concerns have increased, with about 32 of the 51 budgeted positions vacant.

The dispatch center was established in 2002 by a joint powers agreement between the city and county of Santa Fe and receives all emergency response calls for both entities. The agency is governed by a board of directors, a mix of city and county officials.

Brown replaced former director Vanessa Marquez in November following her retirement a month earlier.

According to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Brown had resigned from his last dispatch center position, director of the Fayette County 911 Center in Georgia, in 2018 after a dispute concerning a new policy directive allowing for a "secondary on-call" shift went public.

The "secondary on-call" directive required off-duty staffers to be ready at all times to come back to work to fill a shift.

Brown had previously received criticism from Fayette County 911 staff over what they described as mismanagement. Some of Brown's supporters said the accusations were unfounded during a meeting on the issue, and Fayette County commissioners declined to approve an independent investigation.

Brown declined to discuss the accusations in November.

Members of the Regional Emergency Communications Center board said they investigated the claims but didn't think the allegations rose to a level that should prompt them to pull back their job offer.

County Deputy Manager Elias Bernardino, appointed in January to oversee public safety agencies, said he has been working with Brown to address the concerns, and those efforts will remain ongoing.

"Across the nation, all 911 centers are having the same concerns, and one of the things we have been doing is doing the same strategy and expecting different results, and it is not really working," Bernardino acknowledged.

Discussions have centered on creating ways to attract more workers to the center, with a focus on young adults and people who are used to staring at a computer monitor and typing on a keyboard for long periods of time — including video gamers.

"We have a pretty big vacancy rate, and it is about educating our students about not only local government but also if someone chooses not to go to college they can also start a career with us," he said.