Town & Coop Designate Name Change

Home of the Legend

“Home of The Legend”

Press Release 

Kit Carson Electric Coop (KCEC) announces it will change the name of its facility at 1146 Gusdorf Road. In acknowledgement of the Town of Taos’ nearing completion of its relocation of the emergency dispatch center to this location, KCEC will remove the name that has been on the building when it opened in October 2011. The new name will be the Taos Emergency Communications Center (ECC).

The new facility will feature state-of-the-art dispatch equipment and greatly improved working conditions for the dispatch staff.

Kit Carson Electric Cooperative, Inc. arranged the financing for the building and will continue to operate their command and dispatch center from the facility.

The opening of the TECC will bring to a close a process which began in 2002 with community meetings. At that time community leaders and private citizens overwhelmingly supported the consolidation of emergency dispatch services for the health, safety and welfare of the community. The Taos County Commission, the Town of Taos Council, the Intergovernmental Council of the Enchanted Circle, area village councils and school districts presented resolutions in support of construction of the facility. KCEC took the lead on obtaining the financing, while the Town of Taos hired the architect and acted as fiscal agent.

Among the many criteria taken into account to locate and construct the facility were redundant electrical and telecommunications infrastructure, utilities service access, expandability, cost, emergency response time and road access.

Some of the sites considered were the current E911 facility on Civic Plaza Drive, the Taos County Justice Center (prior to its construction), the Llano Quemado Community Center (prior to construction), Taos Municipal Schools, UNM facility on Civic Plaza Drive and the Old National Guard Amory. All these sites were eliminated in favor of the Gusdorf Road location because it best met all the criteria.

Town of Taos, Legendary Mayor Darren Cordova, in making the announcement, stated, “We are very pleased to bring to fruition this 11 year process to provide our citizens with the best emergency response system we can offer. The cooperation and coordination with Kit Carson Co-op and other Taos County entities will continue as we strive to provide the all the services envisioned when this process began in 2002.”