|
|
Where the Break Room Author Works
Monterey County, California
Maps to Help You Find My Dispatch Center
(Warning to 'Net Creeps: officers work here -- with guns!)
You might want to check Monterey County Public Works for road closures before heading out...
My dispatch center is on the central California coastline, about 105 miles south of San Francisco, and 350 miles north of Los Angeles, just about where the red cross indicates.
Here's a closer look.
The CHP operates 24 different Communication Centers throughout the state. Mine is a fairly small one. The Comm Centers adjacent to us are:
handling nine Bay Area counties,
Merced Comm Center,
handling Merced County,
and
San Luis Obispo Comm Center,
handling San Luis Obispo County.
The Monterey Dispatch Center provides communication services for five CHP Area offices: Monterey Area, King City Area, Santa Cruz Area, Hollister/Gilroy Area, and the Gilroy Inspection Facilities (Scales) - both Northbound, and Southbound. This means our total geographic area of responsibility is ALL of Monterey county, ALL of Santa Cruz county, ALL of San Benito county, and southern Santa Clara county from just north of where State Route 85 meets Hwy 101, in the southern fringes of the city of San Jose.
The Comm Center I supervise is co-located with the Monterey CHP Area Office. Area Offices are individual Commands covering certain parts of the state. Depending upon the population base of of various places, there may be one -- or several -- Area Offices within a county. The Monterey Area "shares" Monterey County with the King City Area, which is located in the southern portion of the county, along Hwy 101.
Monterey Area's geographic jurisdiction is from the northern-most edge of Monterey County all the way down to the Soledad River bridge on Hwy 101, and ALL of the coastline on State Route 1 from Watsonville to the San Luis Obispo county line. This includes the beautiful (and sometimes deadly) Big Sur coast. Far too many folks have over-estimated their ability to drive that highway and gone over the side....
My Communications Center is a separate building next to the Monterey Area Office. We're in rural surroundings right off State Route 68, just outside the Salinas city limits. About 18 miles to the west of us is the Monterey Peninsula.
We were slated for a new facility to be built in 2002, further inside the city limits. Those plans have been scrapped, due to agency budget "situations." We could certainly USE a new Comm Center, since this one is small and cramped, but since they've installed windows to the outside world, it's less like a dungeon than it was before. If we ever DO re-locate, I'll miss the sounds of red winged black-birds warbling outside our back door. And those cows mooing to each other from the rollng hills nearby......
Progress is progress, after all, right?
Would you like to know what the weather is like outside my window right now?
Speaking of "windows," on July 22nd, 1997, we installed honest-to-god, real windows TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD at my Center! Want a glimpse of that process?