By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
With its approval Monday evening by the Glasgow Common Council, all of the parties involved have now adopted an updated interlocal agreement regarding the operations and funding of 911 emergency telecommunications in Barren and Metcalfe counties.
That approval didn’t come without considerable questioning and discussion, though.
Technically, the term of the agreement doesn’t begin until it also has approval from Kentucky’s attorney general and is then filed with the respective county clerk offices in the two counties, though.
The agreement is among the governments of all four of the incorporated cities in the two counties – Glasgow, Cave City, Park City and Edmonton – and of the two counties themselves. The agreement establishes a 911 governing board that oversees most aspects of the operations of the Barren-Metcalfe Emergency Communications Center, which actually consists of two locations – the primary one in Glasgow where all 911 calls for both counties are answered and one in Edmonton, to which calls for law enforcement, fire services and any other emergency agencies other than the ambulance service, in Metcalfe County are forwarded. That board also oversees the usage of any revenues collected.
The updated document has been literally years in the making, with discussions in those board meetings stretching back to previous judge-executives’ and mayors’ terms and hitting multiple roadblocks.
One of the main sticking points has been the best way to determine how much Metcalfe County should be pitching in financially toward the service. Another issue has been the fact that, with an increasingly smaller number of customers having land lines, the 911 fees collected via the telephone companies that provide landline service have shrunk considerably, and the 911 fee on the increasing number of cellular lines is not enough to offset the loss of the other. Various ideas have been tossed about as to the best way to have stable funding.
Committee’s preview
The agreement was a major topic of discussion at the regular meeting of the council’s public safety committee, which was immediately prior to the full council meeting. Beverly Harbison, director of the BMECC, told that group of four council members that although she disagrees with some aspects of the new agreement, its approval was necessary as a step in the right direction.
She urged Councilmen Freddie Norris, the chair, Marlin Witcher, Patrick Gaunce and James “Happy” Neal not to let the work stop there, though, saying that they need to revisit it soon and frequently to iron out some unresolved issues.
“We know we’ve got to change our funding mechanism. We’re way behind on that …,” Harbison said. “My biggest concern, and I have voiced this in the 911 meetings, you are voting tonight on the interlocal agreement.”
The agreement calls for Barren County to cover 81 percent of the costs – not including almost all of the staff members in the county, who are City of Glasgow employees – and Metcalfe County to cover the remaining 19 percent. Barren-Metcalfe County Emergency Medical Services, the local ambulance service, reimburses the city roughly $220,000 to $240,000 each year for three full-time personnel positions, and the 911 governing board pays for one position plus 80 percent of the assistant director’s position. The city and county there each pay half of the staffing costs for the Edmonton facility.
Harbison said that ratio was derived from the audited budget figures that don’t really break down the spending by county.
“I think if we were a full, true consolidated dispatch with Metcalfe County being with us,” she said, “I think you could do it like that, but what I have said from Day One is I think we ought to look at what we spend.”
She said there are years that Barren County’s expenditures will be higher and sometimes they will be less. Gaunce asked why they wouldn’t look at it by spending.
Mayor Henry Royse, a nonvoting member of the committee but also a voting member of the 911 governing board, said they had originally tried to do that by reviewing every single invoice, and it was taking forever, and Metcalfe County representatives were disputing some of the figures.
“I don’t think we’ve ever collected every dime Metcalfe County owes us,” he said, “from back in the days when they were looking at one bill at a time. The only way for us to be fully funded, the only way for us to get it is [to] say, ‘OK, you’re going to owe us 19 percent of whatever we spend.’ That was the only way we can get over our hump, because we would sit there and argue whether these paper towels went to Edmonton.”
That was just an example he provided, but there truly have been many discussions about what expenses were for where.
Harbison said she just wanted to make sure the panel had it in their minds that if they approved the agreement Monday, she was hoping and praying they would take another look at it in the coming year.
The bookkeeper the governing board was using had previously gone through five years’ worth of invoices, trying to determine what was for each county, but they are now keeping track of those things better as it goes along, so it shouldn’t be so difficult in the future.
Gaunce said he agreed they should look at it on a regular basis.
“It’s a start,” Harbison said. “To pass this, we’ll be able to change our funding mechanism. It’s got to be done. It’s got to be done.”
Her wish has been to consolidate the two centers into one, but Metcalfe County representatives refused to do that. She said that making it a consolidated center would have given them the option of getting up to $400,000 in additional funding available to regional 911 facilities, and it would save on expenses for the Edmonton center, but the Metcalfe folks wanted their own center and personnel.
She said a lot of people don’t realize that all the calls go through the Glasgow center first, and the Glasgow center now does emergency medical dispatching, helping callers know what to do while waiting for an ambulance to arrive, and it is the designated center with access to the state and federal criminal databases.
“You all know I don’t sugarcoat much. They just don’t have the quality of people because they don’t train them. They just hire them. They work them part time; they don’t fully train them. My folks, by law, has to go to the academy. They have to be trained because we are LINK/NCIC/CGIS compliant,” she said, referring to the acronyms for those databases. She added that the Edmonton center typically has one person on shift at a time; she needs four but currently usually only has three.
Harbison reiterated that she would have preferred the agreement be “a little different,” but nonetheless, the one they had before them is needed because it is a necessary move forward.
Harbison said she felt the county government and those of Cave City and Park City should be pitching in toward the costs, whereas now, the county is simply a passthrough agency for the landline 911 fees. She said that in her opinion, the county should cover the cost of at least three positions.
She said that Barren County Judge-Executive Jamie Bewley Byrd, who chairs the governing board, had mentioned at its last meeting that the county pays for the jail, but Harbison said city residents also pay county taxes, so they are helping to fund the jail.
Harbison said her staff does more than answer the calls, too; they are responsible for inputting information from police reports, emergency protective orders, stolen firearms, etc. into the system.
“Lots of paperwork, lots of accountability,” she said.
Gaunce asked for a breakdown of some of the figures, including calls for service, at the next meeting, and she said she could and would.
Glasgow Police Department Chief Guy Howie, also a nonvoting member of the council committee, said he would be careful about basing cost ratios on call volume alone, because the dispatchers have to be there and present regardless of how many calls come in and from where or for what service.
Harbison agreed and said they need to look at the budget as a whole.
Harbison had retired as director several years ago and then came back just shy of two years later to that position five years ago, and she said they were trying to get this agreement changed before she retired.
“It should not take this city or county eight, 10 years to make a change that is so vital to this community,” she said.
The mayor, who’s been dealing with it for his nearly two years in office, likened the process to trying to plow a piece of concrete. He also noted that the original agreement had some significant pitfalls in it in that if one party exited the agreement, they relinquish all the associated assets purchased with those 911 funds to the party or parties that remained, and that part remains in the updated version.
“You can’t walk out because of what you would use,” he said.
The mayor added after further discussion, “We’re providing top-notch 911 dispatch service for Barren County and for Metcalfe County. I don’t think that Metcalfe County necessarily understands what they wouldn’t have if we weren’t doing it over here.”
“That’s a fair statement,” Harbison said.
Full council discussion
When it came time for the full council to consider the matter, Norris made the motion to approve the resolution adopting the new agreement, and Neal seconded it. Councilwoman Marna Kirkpatrick asked Byrd, who attended the council meeting in case there were questions, to come to the podium, and Councilman Max Marion, who is the council representative on the 911 governing board, said the updated agreement had been a long time coming, and a lot of headway had been made, but he didn’t see anything in it about a penalty if one party purchased something and didn’t cover the cost or one party didn’t pay their portion.
Byrd said there wasn’t anything about that in the older version, either, and they had only gotten as far as they were through the efforts of Glasgow City Attorney Rich Alexander and Edmonton City Attorney Brian Pack working through getting a document drafted.
She said the new agreement “opens up the fee collection, which will also help Barren and Metcalfe.”
The new agreement discusses the phone-line fees but then goes on to say that each member would be authorized to fund its portion “by any legal means available including, but not limited to, the levy of any special tax, license, or fee not in conflict with the Constitution and statutes of this state.”
Byrd said it also provides at least some definition, whereas there had been none, as to how much “debt” or expenses each county is supposed to provide. She said it was based on population, with Metcalfe County having 19 percent of the total population and Barren County having 81 percent, but also based on the audit report.
“The last thing that they wanted to add in there,” she said of Metcalfe County’s representatives, “was that anything over $100,000, one-time purchase would be approved by the interlocal board.”
That board includes both judge-executives and each of the four mayors or their designees, as well as certain others.
She said those were the key changes, and this was a step, not a perfect thing that everybody would want.
“It’s more than it’s been moved for a long time …,” Byrd said, mentioning meetings she and Royse had had in Metcalfe County with those parties. “This is huge honestly, the fact that we’ve gotten this far.”
She said Glasgow would be the last of the six entities to sign off on it, just due to timing and no other reason, but it would be monumental to have it done.
Councilman Terry Bunnell tried to use an example of $100 revenue and $90 expenses, and he asked for confirmation that neither county government puts its own funds into that.
Byrd tried to use some actual figures, but Bunnell wanted to keep it simpler. He emphasized that Glasgow was paying the majority of personnel costs, with $1.3 million budgeted this year and $1.1 million the prior fiscal year. And he pointed out that the 81/19 percent split is for operational costs (although it does also include the 1.8 staff positions, too). He wanted to know whether that was taken into account when looking at those ratios.
Byrd said they had evaluated all the numbers with payroll included.The personnel part is something the city has just always taken on, she said, but the fee collection is the main thing this provides is an opportunity to change, because the landline fees just “is not just cutting it” and the state gets the majority of the cell phone line fees. Those discussions on how to change that will need to start soon after the agreement is finalized, she said.
She said the city pays a large part of Barren County’s portion because of the staffing it covers.
Gaunce interjected that the agreement is moving things along better than before, and although Glasgow pays “the lion’s share” of Barren County’s costs, who pays what for Barren County’s portion could be decided between the city or cities and Barren County later.
Byrd said that, as she understood it, Glasgow had always wanted to keep the personnel as city employees.
Until several years ago, Barren-Metcalfe EMS actually employed some of the dispatchers directly, but there were issues with their having different supervisors, different pay scales, etc., and eventually an agreement was reached that put all the emergency communications center employees under the city’s umbrella but the ambulance service paid the city for three of those positions.
Bunnell started talking about call volume for city services and said it would lead to a savings of about $300,000 to the city if they budgeted based on call volumes.
“To me, that’s a large number,” he said. “What I keep, I mean, I come back to this, this is a movement forward and I appreciate the work that’s been done.”
He said that with that acknowledged, “we’ve got to keep this moving to make it fair for everyone else involved, especially the residents in Glasgow. The residents of Glasgow are paying the load of this.”
Byrd likened it to the county’s situation with the jail, saying that 85 percent of the inmates are coming from the city, and the county charges other counties to house their inmates there.
“Do you see what I’m getting at? That’s a rationalization I think I’ve kind of looked at with the mayor,” she said.
Gaunce said that in his opinion, they needed to get this agreement done and then they could sit down and work out further details, because he believes the city is paying an unfair amount on that.
Bunnell then brought up the possibility of levying a special tax, as was mentioned in the agreement, and Byrd said they can’t do that until this agreement is done, but she said she would expect that any tax would replace the landline 911 fee.
After a little more further discussion on how that would be collected and by whom, if it were to occur, Byrd said that there is opinion among some with county government that if the county took over collecting a fee, then it would also take over running the center.
Yet again, Gaunce said that he was hearing that they needed to get the agreement done and then work out further details within the Barren County entities, and Kirkpatrick asked whether that was Byrd’s recommendation, and she said they need to approve it before and so they can begin to address these other issues.
Kirkpatrick called for the question, meaning she asked that discussion cease and the vote be taken.
Bunnell said he wanted to hear from the 911 director and Norris agreed, so Bunnell asked for Harbison’s opinion of the document.
“I think it’s a move forward. We’ve got to do something, because we’ve got to change our funding mechanism. We’re way behind on this; we’re probably 10 years behind. Land lines have dropped drastically, so we’ve got to do something and we can’t do anything to that [funding mechanism] until you all do this,” Harbison said. “No, I don’t totally agree with this interlocal agreement 100 percent.”
She reiterated some of the concerns she expressed in the committee meeting about how they came to the 81/19 split.
“You guys need to revisit this again and make sure we get what we’re paying for for the citizens of Barren County,” Harbison said.
Marion re-asked his original penalty question, and while some were looking at the document to find something about that, Kirkpatrick reworded and reiterated her request for a vote.
“I make a motion to call the question,” she said.
Norris seconded that.
Gaunce asked whether Harbison was finished and said he didn’t want to cut her off right in the middle of what she was saying.
The vote on whether to suspend the discussion then was 5-4 in favor of doing so, so the discussion ended and the council moved on to voting on the actual resolution adopting the agreement. That vote was unanimously in favor.
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RELATED CONTENT: Glasgow News 1 reported on other matters before the council separately at this link.
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