Public Safety Telecommunicator; PST

• Health, dental, vision, and life insurance
• Retirement benefits
• Paid vacation, sick leave and holidays
• Employee Assistance Program
• Additional voluntary benefits

The initial Final date to receive applications is November 1, 2026 @ 3:00 pm. This position may remain open longer than that date depending on the number of applications. An additional Sheriff's Office‑specific application will be required after this application. Once this application is received the additional application will be sent to you. Please contact the Sheriff's Office if you have any questions.

This job description is not intended to be an exclusive list of all duties, responsibilities or qualifications associated with the job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Rio Blanco County prohibits discrimination on the basis of age, sex, race, color, national origin, creed, ancestry, religion, disability, pregnancy, genetic information, sexual orientation, marital status, gender identity or any other status protected by federal or state law.

This critical role serves as the vital communications link between the public needing help and emergency services response. As members of the public safety ecosystem, PSTs are typically the first point of contact when a person reaches out for help. This entails a candidate to be able to work independently in a high‑stress environment while receiving and evaluating incoming emergency and administrative requests for emergency services including but not limited to law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services (EMS), triaging those requests for service, providing guidance and assistance to the public in life‑safety situations and coordinating appropriate responses to high‑risk, high‑stress operations, with the objective of keeping all participants safe.

The primary responsibility of the PST is to protect citizens and emergency responders during the emergency incident. These include:

• Using training and policies to screen requests for emergency services; answering them professionally, recognizing if a call is received from telephone, text, video, or an automated data feed.
• Using appropriate technology to communicate with callers.
• Interpreting sensor data to triage, prioritize, properly categorize, and initiate the correct emergency response.
• Using knowledge of law enforcement, fire, and EMS protocols to prioritize and sequence calls promptly in limited time with limited or no supervision.
• Demonstrating clear and effective communications with active listening, call control, judgment, respect, and empathy with callers that range from calm to panicked.
• Providing pre‑arrival and post‑dispatch instructions to those that are requiring assistance during high‑stress situations, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), childbirth, hemorrhaging, active shooter and entrapments.
• Managing challenging callers using appropriate handling of distressed, autistic, hearing‑impaired, elderly, angry, and foreign‑language‑speaking callers.
• Providing direct counseling to suicidal persons, domestic violence victims, and children.
• Ascertaining incident information by obtaining and verifying caller information and location, determining the nature of the incident, and all available data including but not limited to automated data, social media information, text message, images or video, and providing information to emergency services either verbally and/or digitally.
• Ability to prioritize multiple events based on available resources—critical thinking.
• Using TDD and relay services to comply with standards for handling calls from hearing‑impaired callers.
• Utilizing…