Marshall County Commissioners on Tuesday approved the second reading of an ordinance that will restructure the county’s E-911 operations, albeit with a few changes.
The proposed ordinance, introduced during an April 21 special-called meeting of Marshall County Fiscal Court, would have dissolved the seven-member board that previously oversaw management of the Criminal Justice Information System/LINK NCIC and general adminstration and instead placed management of the LINK/NCIC system with the Marshall County Sheriff; general administrative duties, including day-to-day operations and preparing the annual budget, would fall to the 911 director, who would have been required to report to each meeting of the Marshall County Alliance to give the county’s first responders access to the director for input on agency operations. In addition, a three-member grievance board would be established under the ordinance to resolve any issues among agencies, according to the ordinance.
However, District 3 Commissioner Rick Cocke raised concerns Tuesday that responders weren’t getting a voice at the table by relying on Marshall County Alliance meetings to convey their issues to the director as it related to agency operations.
“I talked to the emergency management director, I talked to the sheriff, I talked to the 911 director, I talked to all nine fire chiefs individually, and the mayor of Calvert City, the mayor of Benton and the police chiefs of those two entities,” Cocke said. “… Every single one of them told me the same thing. The Alliance is a broken tool. … They were adamant, every single one of these people were adamant, that in this document they would like to see a board that was indentified in this document so that they had a seat at the table. I heard loud and clear that they feel like the eight agencies that use this, and I agree 100 percent, that they have the ability more than Rick Cocke or Johnny Bowlin or Bob Gold or Kevin Neal to direct … and they want a voice at the table.”
Cocke proposed implementing a board consisting of nine individuals – including city police chiefs – to serve in an advisory capacity with the 911 director. Judge-Executive Kevin Neal questioned the county’s authority to require employees not under the county’s umbrella to serve in such a capacity.
“I think you’re leaving out, too, the fact that we had an interlocal agreement with a seven-member board and we had our problems, did we not?” Neal said. “We had problems not only at the operational level but the HR level. That seven-member board, if you talked to some of the same individuals involved, they would tell you that that was complex and it caused a lot of problems. An advisory board is not going to solve everything. A nine-member board increasing the members of that board, having the alliance meeting – we’re hearing now that the Alliance meeting is basically broken? … What I’m saying is that that Alliance board is made up of the same agencies that you’re breaking down to nine. I don’t think that we solve problems. I think we’re jumping out of one sinking boat into another sinking boat.”
Marshall County 911 Director Misti Drew said the issue could be resolved by forming a sub-committee from the Alliance to address such issues. Drew said attendance at Alliance meetings was often limited, however, and some responders were confused about what channels would need to be followed to convey issues or concerns related to operations under the new ordinance.
“I know that those of that attend the Alliance meetings, sometimes they’re very well attended, and in those cases – which is what I shared with Rick when he asked me – I think that’d be great,” Drew said. “If they are very well attended and everybody feels like they have a voice and ideas that they can share with me, that’s wonderful. The concerns that I was hearing … ‘Are we still going to have a voice in the way you all handle policy and procedure things?’ That is the responders’ question to me. If they have a question about how we do something policy wise, do they go straight to the fiscal court or is there a body, if you will, that in that ordinance outlines how to deal with policy discrepancies? I think that’s really what their concern is. If they have a question about how we do something procedurally, what is their vehicle to be able to get that to you all?”
Neal said an advisory board would not be out of the question, but should be established by the Alliance rather than the fiscal court.
Commissioners elected to change the subsection of the ordinance requiring the 911 director to report to Alliance meetings and instead establish a voluntary nine-member advisory board consisting of the sheriff and chiefs of police for Benton and Calvert City or their designees, three fire department representatives as chosen by the county fire chiefs, the county EMS director or his/her designee and the county animal control director or his/her designee. The advisory board will serve as responders’ conduit to the director concerning policy and precedure within the agency. Commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the ordinance with those designated changes.
The adoption of the ordinance establishes a definitive administrative channel for management of LINK NCIC, which Sheriff Kevin Byars said was necessary to maintain the county’s access to the system.
“The biggest concern now is getting the NCIC part of it confirmed, because we were granted a pass the last time we had a compliance inspection,” Byars said. “If it happens again and nothing’s in place, we’re going to get our terminals pulled from us, there’s no two ways about it.”
The ordinance does not pertain to solving the county’s E-911 funding issue, which has been the source of some confusion among elected officials and residents. The county hosted a series of 11 town hall meetings throughout the county, presenting options for possible revenue streams to fund the agency. When Marshall County 911 services were implemented in the county in 1992, surcharges applied to county landlines funded the department. Since then, landline usage has declined considerably, and rising equipment costs have resulted in continuing budget shortfalls. The county has subsidized the service in recent years, but that cost is becoming a difficult burden to bear. Subsidies have risen from about $125,000 in 2010 to $320,000 budgeted for the 2017-18 fiscal year.
Officials put together a presentation outlining three local options to potentially resolve the agency’s funding issues going forward: increasing landline fees, entering into an interlocal agreement among Benton, Calvert City, Hardin and the county to kick in funding based on population per capita or assessing a fee on property tax bills for occupied dwellings in the county. Drew reported back to commissioners Tuesday on the results of those meetings. Both she and Byars said residents to whom they had made the presentation tended to favorCVN“In other words they wanted to know what type of research would be done to establish that fee,” Drew said. “As you all had mentioned, you look at the shortfall first, and then you look at your database and that’s how your calculation is made. We don’t have a firm database right now on multi-housing units. Our GIS and PVA offices have a good database of your single-family homes, your businesses, but they don’t have a good footprint of what those multi-housing housing units and/or any type of tourism population or any revenue that would be generated from that, we don’t have that database yet. So, that’s why we don’t have a concrete number on what that fee would be.”
Drew said constituents had concerns about rental property owners having enough notice to be able to renegotiate their rental fees to be able to account for the parcel fee, as well.
Click here to view the E-911 presentation in full.
Read more on additional fiscal court actions tomorrow at Marshall County Daily.