KOKOMO – The Howard County Council early Monday morning implemented a new countywide tax to support dispatch operations.
The Public Safety Answering Point tax, which was approved unanimously by council members, imposes a tax rate of 0.1 percent on the adjusted gross income of county taxpayers.
The tax hike is expected to raise between $1.5 million and $1.7 million annually for Howard County dispatch, according to Auditor Martha Lake, and will cost a resident with $50,000 in adjusted gross income a total of $50. Taxpayers will see the change on their paychecks starting Jan. 1.
Monday’s roughly 10-minute meeting, which was first announced during a council budget session on Sept. 6 and legally advertised on Sept. 7, served as both a public hearing and the ordinance’s final action.
“One of the reasons for this ordinance is … the 911 fund has been funded by phone – charges on phones, and then as the landlines have dropped, the income for this fund has also gone down,” said councilman Jim Papacek, who presided over Monday’s meeting in the absence of President Dick Miller.
“And this is a way to keep all this new equipment that we’ve received, help keep it all up to date, the maintenance on it, and make any additions to it that we need,” Papacek added, referencing the county’s newly implement P25 radio program.
In a phone interview, Miller said the process of approving the tax was “generally the way they are.” He also said that “in order for certain things to happen, it was a requirement to move along,” referencing a financial need to implement the tax.
Howard County Sheriff Department’s 911 Communications Center Director Gary Bates said in an email that the “PSAP tax was necessary as it helps offset the cost of the consolidated communications center from the county general fund to a specific PSAP tax.”
He also said the tax will help fund general dispatch center operations, “which includes personnel and all the equipment that is utilized within the 911 center.”
“The PSAP tax will help ensure the consolidated 911 center has the latest technology to process 911 calls,” noted Bates, explaining that the dispatch center is budgeted at roughly $1.7 million for 2018.
Bates, however, said the most important part of the dispatch operation is the ability of personnel “to accept, process and dispatch not only 911 calls but all the non-emergency calls within the city and county.
“If the PSAP tax [had] not been approved, then attracting and retaining the best personnel possible and the latest technology could not be supported.”
Currently, dispatch operations are funded through the county’s telephone 911 fund – which consists of fees paid to the state and sent to the county on a monthly basis – and the general fund. The county will receive roughly $654,000 to the 911 fund in 2017, according to Lake, a significantly smaller figure than the climbing dispatch budget.
Lake explained that money received through the tax will go into a new dispatch, or PSAP, fund. Dispatch salaries will then be moved from the general fund to the dispatch fund, and the county “will have sufficient money to pay them in 2018 due to the new PSAP tax,” she noted.
Notably, dispatch employees were granted $1 per hour raises in the 2018 budget adopted by the council last week. Lake noted that 2018 dispatch salaries were approved at $1.05 million, an increase of just under $50,000 from 2017.
However, an expense of $138,000 for overtime in 2017 is shown in county finances, a total that decreased in the 2018 budget to $75,000.
Additionally, Lake explained that the Everbridge mass notification contract, which is paid from the general fund at $23,000 annually, can be paid from the new dispatch fund. The total amount that can be moved from the general fund to the new dispatch fund in 2018 is $1.07 million.
“Right now we are funding dispatch salaries out of the general fund because the 911 fund does not allow us to do that, and because [Bates] has said that he’s going to need more money for his operation,” Lake said.
"It's because of dispatch ... in the past we've had some issues with dispatch, and hopefully this will allow it to be able to be funded in a way so that it can operate and be what our community needs. We were trying to do that anyway, but this should help," she added later.
A major reason for the tax, say county officials, is to unburden the county’s general fund, which is already projected to drop in 2018.
Currently, the general fund is between $9 million and $10 million, but the projected operating balance for 2018 is likely to be less than $8 million because of the increase in 2018 general fund budget expenses, according to Lake.
The 2017 general fund budget was approved at $21.06 million, while the 2018 budget was approved at $23.97 million.
“We try to keep six months operating balance on hand to keep our operations safe and dependable for our Howard County taxpayers residents,” said Lake.
Bates added that “the county general fund supports the consolidated city and county 911 center more and more each year as costs rise.”
“The dispatch was close to its maximum allocated funds and with the cost of the backbone of the new P-25 radio we would have to take more and more out of the county general fund,” he wrote in an email.
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