911 call center project proceeds
By Steve Herring
Published in News on August 22, 2016 1:46 PM
Plans for a new 911 call center are proceeding even though Wayne County commissioners are considering the addition of an emergency operations center to the project.
The addition was suggested by Commissioner Joe Gurley, the county's former Office of Emergency Services director, during the board's Tuesday morning session.
In a related matter, commissioners said they want to see more flexibility in how counties can use 911 revenues included among the legislative goals of the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners.
Counties should have the flexibility to use the 911 fee revenues for the operational costs of the 911 centers across the state, commissioners said.
Baring that flexibility, commissioners said they would like for the state to consider granting counties the authority to levy a local 911 fee.
That would give counties the option of funding operations either through property or sales taxes or through this new fee or a combination thereof, County Manager George Wood said.
Commissioners agreed as well that the current make-up of the state 911 board gives far too much authority to the telecommunications industry at the expense of local government.
The 911 revenue used to be local money, but the state seized it, and now it divvies it up Wood said.
"You are getting less money now because they are taking part of the money to create a grant fund that you then apply for," Wood said. "They only let you use it, the best way to describe it is anything inside the walls of the 911 center.
"For instance when we were doing the communications towers, the radio system, all of that is necessary for dispatching. But they won't let you use it for that."
Other states allow the revenues to pay salaries of the dispatchers, he said.
"Basically what they (911 board) is saying is you have to pay for it using either property or sales taxes," Wood said. "What we are saying here is that county commissioners should have the authority to make a local decision about do you want to pay a property and sales tax or do you want some of it paid by a local fee which would go on everybody's telephone bill."
"It is even worse than that because now they taking our dollars and basically giving it to other counties as a grant to build a facility," Chairman Joe Daughtery said. "But yet the citizens in Wayne County are going to have to finance a new facility because we couldn't get a grant. So they are picking winners and losers using our money. It is a real problem."
The approximately $3.82 million center will be built on an 18.7-acre vacant lot between the county Facilities Services Office and the animal shelter.
The board Tuesday unanimously agreed establishing a capital project ordinance for the 911 center. Having such an ordinance means that the funds do not have to be reappropriated each year of the project.
Daughtery said he had misunderstood and had thought that the center would also include space for the county's Office of Emergency Management.
"We are not planning on moving the Office of Emergency Management over there," Wood said. "We are just talking about an emergency operations center. Those (Office of Emergency Management) have a lot of public contact, and we want to keep them where they are readily accessible to the public.
"All we are talking about here is an emergency operations center. It is a room where you would have phone connections, desks and things like that. For instance if you had a major hurricane come through, the people would be activated to that EOC, which we already have a list now -- county officials, city officials, people like public works, sheriff, police, fire departments and EMS."
There also would be representatives from the private sector such as from Duke and Tri-County Electric, he said.
"In other words, people who run critical infrastructure in this county whether they are public or private," Wood said. "They should be in there because we have got to make that decisions at that point countywide. That room does not get activated that often.
"So the question that we are back to is do you want that (emergency operations center) fully designed as an alternate which is what I was hearing you say."
Gurley said that what he was suggesting that since the project would be done over the course of more than one budget.
"Looking at (fiscal year) 18-19 where our debt falls off and the critical need of an EOC with the 911 center in the event you have an emergency," Gurley said.
Wood said he had met with the architect on Monday who had said the same thing.
"I told him not at this point because the direction I had from you all was you didn't want to move in that direction," Wood said. "So if you want to, you don't necessarily have to make it today, but you need to make that decision fairly quickly because I need to give him a different direction if that is what you want to do.
"But my direction to him was what we had originally talked about which was plan the EOC. We need to know how it is going to attach, where on the building it attaches, make sure we preserve the footprint in how we lay out the building, parking lot and all of that so that we don't have to encroach on something else. But I did not instruct him, in fact I told him not to fully design it."
Wood said the room would be part of the schematic design anyway.
"I agree with Mr. Wood," Commissioner Wayne Aycock said. "Let's go ahead and act on this (capital project ordinance) motion today, and then if we want to bump it up some. We've got a little time."
Wood said that commissioners could do as Gurley had said and do the room as an alternate bid.
"We are going to do this like we have done every other building," Wood said. "You will be totally involved in reviewing that schematic drawing in detail. We will probably make it a work session because you really need to sit around the table and look at the floor plans.
"At that point we can make a decision about whether you want to go forward or not because it is only after the schematic design that he goes into full design. That is time you have got to pull the trigger one way or the other."