OPINION: Commissioners failed to provide leadership on 911 board

Prior to the consolidation of the 911 Communications Center, all 911 calls went to the dispatch center located in the Justice Center and operated by the sheriff.

If the call was for emergency services in one of the three cities, the call was transferred to the dispatcher in either Kalispell, Whitefish or Columbia Falls. Assuming that by then the bad guys hadn’t severed the line, the caller repeated the request for emergency services and appropriate response was initiated. Each city paid for their dispatch personnel, dispatch radios and all dispatch communication equipment, as well as providing a place to house the dispatch services.

City residents paid their county taxes to support the sheriff and the dispatch center, and they paid city taxes to support their police force, including dispatch.

The primary goal of consolidation was to improve efficiency in handling calls and provide upgrades to equipment. We hoped for cost savings, but knew that with regulatory changes and required hardware upgrades, that would be challenging. However, we only proceeded with the commitment that it would not result in an increase in taxation to county or city residents.

Here is where it starts to get weird. Almost immediately after consolidation the cities, employing astonishing selective recall, and with lust in their eyes for the mils it took to pay for the consolidated center, began to chant the “double taxation” mantra. It’s not double taxation, it’s what it always has been, paying for services rendered.

City residents can expect law enforcement at their door within two or three minutes — probably a lot of law enforcement because they are very good at what they do. But that doesn’t happen for free: City residents pay for that. They hire their own police officers, and buy their own patrol cars. Dispatch is a function of law enforcement, and historically the city has always paid for it, as they should, for their officers. County residents, on the other hand, understand that it might be 15 minutes or more before law enforcement arrives, and if you choose to live up the North Fork, it is nearly same day service.

 By state law, cities and the county are capped on the number of mils they can charge in any one year. Passing a 911 mil levy frees up mils that are currently being spent by the cities and the county on the dispatch center. Surely, no one who possesses all of his or her faculties thinks that there is even a remote chance those mils won’t be maxed out again as soon as they think they can get away with it. Certainly our present county commissioners, the most tax hungry in this century, will do so because they have already connived a way to go back and tax us for mils that were left on the table by previous commissioners. Then with brazen hubris, and ignoring the voters’ rejection of the 911 tax, conjured up this new tax.

I must give the city managers credit: By stridently beating the drum of “double taxation” and by taking advantage of the ineptitude and inexperience in the county commissioners’ office, they’ve nearly managed to free up those long sought for mils.

The untimely death of Jim Dupont resulted in a vacuum of leadership from the county commissioner on the 911 Board. Grant funding, while never to be regarded as a panacea, is a necessary and important part of operating such a facility. Acquiring grants, and providing regional leadership and coordination is the job for a county commissioner, not the sheriff. Sheriff Dupont made that crystal clear to me, in Jim’s indomitable and unique way, in my first year in office as a county commissioner. As a result of his prompting and a lot of trips across the wind swept prairies of Eastern Montana, and by working with the city law enforcement, and in conjunction with the other commissioners, millions of grant dollars were initially acquired for the new consolidated 911 center.

Our county commissioners failed us in two ways. They fell under the magical spell of the misguided chanting from the cities; and most regrettably they failed to provide leadership on the 911 Board. Whichever commissioner is on the 911 Board needs to be immediately replaced with someone who does something besides sit there like a bump on a log. In tribute to ineptitude, perhaps this new tax should be named after whichever commissioner is on the 911 Board.

Undoubtedly, a strategic long-term funding plan is needed for the consolidated 911 Communications Center. Sheriff Curry deserves credit for recognizing that, stepping into the leadership vacuum from the commissioners’ office and attempting to come up with a solution. We all owe the dispatchers a debt of gratitude for the difficult job that they do; a job that is made even more stressful with funding uncertainty resulting in staffing issues and outdated equipment.  

The taxpayers deserve better than we are getting from the commissioners’ office. Before building themselves new offices and slapping up other buildings all around the county campus with the hope of getting their names on the plaques in the entryway, they should be thinking about law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMS responders, and dispatchers that will be called, sometimes at the risk of their own lives, to save our homes, and our lives.

Brenneman, of Creston, is a former Democratic county commissioner.