The Marshall County E-911 Board met on Thursday morning at the Marshall County Judicial Building to discuss future funding options to keep the service in-county.
If funding options cannot be procured, consolidation with Kentucky State Police is the most likely solution; however, that would likely put many Marshall County families out of a job.
Also, consolidation would bring with it a $200,000 grant application, but, it would cost the county $166,000 to opt out of a brand new phone contract for E-911.
E-911 Director, Misti Drew presented to the board the E-911 budget over the past three years that showed with standard raises and line-items the budget topped out at $588,000 a year, with a call volume of 100,000 calls.
That compares with the original budget in 1992 of $241,000 with a call volume of less than 4,000. Additionally, Drew said that the department has been ‘self-sufficient’ as the inter-local agreement with the county and city governments expired after five years of operation.
To keep the department running in 2016, Drew estimated that they needed a fully-functional CAD system, radio system, update of floor and evacuation plans, and most importantly, implementing pictometry in cooperation with the Marshall County PVA office.
Pictometry is an aerial image capture process that takes a rendering of the front and side of each building in the county.
This would save the county time, manpower and money as the process can be done in the PVA office at a cost of $15,000 a year with no aerial flyovers. To help with the process, the GIS and PVA office could partner with Murray State University’s 3-D graphic department to speed up the implementation of pictometry to help calculating the number of dwellings in the county and help law enforcement pinpoint an exact location in an expedited amount of time.
As for how money could be raised to keep the department and jobs in the county, the board looked at two different options that are being implemented in Kentucky counties, such as: Garrard, Campbell and Lincoln counties…a 911 Fee Calculation.
Currently, landlines in the county are charged a $1.50 tax per month to keep the department afloat. That leads to $17 dollars a year per landline, which leads to a Fiscal Court subsidy of $200,000. The new proposals look to eliminate that.
The first, and most logical choice according to the E-911 board, would be a service fee on property tax bills that would equal out to approximately $35 for 17,000 dwellings in the county. That would provide an additional $595,000 a year before CRMS funding reductions as well as roughly a 10 percent cut in bills that are not collected. Even with that, nearly $85,000 would be left over in revenue at the end of the fiscal year.
To add to the argument that the aforementioned process would be the best solution, Marshall County Sheriff Kevin Byars added that collection of property taxes range anywhere from 96-98 percent.
The second suggestion would to add a $2.75 fee to utility bills in the county, with .10 going back to the utility companies for collecting the tax. At 17-19,000 dwellings in the county, and $33 a year per residence, the county would collect nearly $607,000 a year; however, that is before the county would have to go through three different agencies at an undetermined cost to collect the money that they are owed.
Before a formal proposal is sent to the Marshall County Fiscal Court, the board agreed that Town Hall meetings should be organized in Benton, Hardin and Calvert City for the community to see and discuss with the board options for keeping E-911 in the county at a cost that is reasonable for tax payers.
No meetings were scheduled at this time, but the proposals were given the ‘OK’ to move forward.