911 board wants to raise phone tax from 60 cents to $2.25

MARSHALL, MI — After more than a year of discussions, public presentations and occasional public disputes, the authority that runs the county’s 911 call center knows exactly how it wants to be funded. The only question remaining is whether voters will agree.

The Calhoun County Consolidated Dispatch Authority Governing Board of Directors on Tuesday afternoon made a formal request to the county’s Board of Commissioners that its increased surcharge be placed on the August 2012 ballot.

Everyone with a phone bill in the county pays 60 cents per month to help fund the center. If approved, the ballot item would allow the government to increase that monthly rate to $2.25 per monthly phone bill.

Households with multiple phones would pay the fee on every phone bill every month. The ballot language was approved Tuesday and, if approved, would go into effect starting July 1, 2013.

The actual ballot item must be approved by the Calhoun County Board of Commissioners before it can be placed before the county’s voters.

The 911 call center, which opened in March 2010, replaced the call centers in Albion, Battle Creek and Marshall with one larger center in the Calhoun County government building in Marshall.

Currently the 911 center is paid for by nine government entities of the 29 that use its services. Those nine contribute to the center’s operation through their general funds.

But officials have called the current agreement unfair since some townships that receive the telephone service don’t pay general fund dollars for it.

Calhoun County Board of Commissioners member Steve Frisbie, who represents the county’s government on the dispatch authority board, said he has been approached by many people already asking whether the governments that do pay for the 911 center would lower their taxes in exchange for voters approving the phone bill increase.

“You can’t just take the dollars that we’re spending locally and keep that in place and vote (the surcharge) on top of it,” Frisbie said. “It would truly be a tax increase for me to rail against.”

Mike Herman, Albion city manager and representative on the dispatch board, said the 911 board should ask each entity that is currently paying for 911 to come forward with its plan for that money, should the phone increase be approved.

Still, for those living in communities whose governments do not pay for 911, the surcharge would be a tax increase, said 911 board member Jeff Albaugh.

“Right now the county and those municipalities that are paying have helped float the bill for those that aren’t paying,” Albaugh said. “…Free lunch is over. We’ve got to at least subsidize lunch prices.”

Read the story here.

Related Stories

• No Related Post