PERU – The Miami County Council Tuesday approved nearly $500,000 to pay off more than a decade of debt accumulated through contracts with AT&T to service the county’s central 911 dispatch system.
Commissioner Josh Francis said the original 10-year contract with the company was signed around 2004 and paid around $1 million to AT&T to provide services on the phone lines and the equipment at the center. He said the company at the time was the only one who provided the services and equipment for county dispatch centers in Indiana.
However, after five years, the equipment became outdated and needed to be replaced, Francis said. The only option provided at the time by AT&T to replace the equipment was to sign a new 10-year contract and roll over the money owed on the old contract into the new contract.
That scenario played out two more times, Francis said, and eventually led to a massive amount of debt the county owed to the company.
Commissioners in 2015 voted to move the 911 center to the county’s sheriff’s department. It was then they decided to sever ties with AT&T and move to a new company to provide equipment at the dispatch center.
But, Francis said, it took more than a year for the company to finally provide the full amount the county owed on the contract. He said the sheriff ended up contacting a regional manager of the company just to figure out how much the county owed.
“There was a lot of confusion on that contract on AT&T’s part,” he said. “We couldn’t get answers from them. … We would have liked to have paid this off a year ago if we could have. That was another year of interest we owed them.”
The final total came back at just under $500,000. On Tuesday, council voted to spend $150,000 from a savings fund and another $347,500 from the county’s general fund.
Francis said the county should eventually be reimbursed about $150,000 from AT&T for services the county never ended up using from the company.
He said it was painful to shell out so much money to close out the contract, but it was necessary to get the county out from beneath years of unpaid debt.
“It sucks,” Francis said. “There are a lot of other places that money could have gone, towards a lot better use. … But we’re finally getting this cleaned up and we’re moving forward so future administrations won’t have to deal with this mess.”
Council President Ethan Manning said the new contract for the dispatch center’s equipment has again been signed for 10 years, but it requires the company to replace the equipment after five years.
Francis said other Indiana counties have been placed in similar situations because of contracts with AT&T, which was the only dispatch-center provider in the state for years. He said the company used the lack of competition to take advantage of counties.
“When they started this, they were the only company providing these services,” he said. “Now, there’s competition, so counties are getting away from AT&T.”