City of Grayson continues to wait on 911 meeting

By Tonia Noe, staff writer

Dec. 31, 2008 — The city of Grayson continues to wait for county officials to say when they are ready to discuss the county’s 911-dispatch service.

During a special called meeting Tuesday, Mayor George Steele said he hadn’t heard anything from Judge-Executive Charles Wallace or the magistrates as to when the city and the county would sit together and talk out any differences.

The council voted unanimously in December to pay the 911 dispatch fees, but gave the Carter County Fiscal Court until Feb. 15 to meet with council to work out the 911 issues between the city and county.

Wallace was contacted and said the fiscal court would discuss the matter at its Jan. 13 regular meeting.

“We are not upset at them,” Steele commented during Tuesday’s meeting. ‘We are just asking for them to work with us on putting together a 911 board.”

Steele said the council recommended the board be comprised of two members of fiscal court, two from city council (one from Olive Hill and one from Grayson) and a member at large, of whom the two mayors and judge executive would agree upon.

“The contract they (county) sent had the board made up of one member from each council and the five fiscal court magistrates,” Steele said. “You know what that would be – always a five to two vote.”

Although, Wallace said Steele left out one person who also is included in the contract. “That board would have a member of the ambulance service,” Wallace commented Tuesday. “I just feel like they (city) are not looking at the focus of the whole county – but only themselves. As judge executive, I must look at everyone in the county. Anyone in the county that has phone service should not have an additional surcharge bill to help cover what the city of Grayson is obligated to pay. I feel like the city is trying to make the county add more surcharge to the phone bills just to exempt the city from their obligation of payment.”

Steele said Tuesday that he and city council also wants consideration as to how the county is charging the three agencies for the 911-dispatch service. He said the city of Grayson pays $40,000, the city of Olive Hill pays $30,000 and the ambulance service pays $20,000”

“They are not being straight on how they are sending out the bills,” Steele added. “They say the amount each agency pays is based on call volume. The ambulance service has more calls than the city and they pay less.”

Steele said the county also should consider how much money the Grayson Police Department saves the county each year.

“If we didn’t provide city police, the county would have to provide protection for both cities,” he said. “We are by far saving the county more money by having the police. We have 11 officers and Olive Hill has six, that’s 17 officers protecting what they would have to do.”

During this past week’s icy road situation, Steele said the Grayson Police Department responded to 47 calls outside the city within a four-hour span.

“Those were all calls not in the city,” he said. “They went out to help people stranded on the roadways and to assist with accidents. We want to hold this council accountable for what it does, but we want everyone to hold the county government also accountable for its actions. People thought we didn’t pay the 911 bills because the city didn’t have the money. This city is in better financial shape than it has been in the past 25 years. Money flow is not a problem. We just want the county to work with us.”

Wallace said he was at the 911-center Tuesday during the icy conditions and witnessed all the calls coming and going.

“Anything the Grayson PD answered outside the city would have been on a volunteer basis, “ Wallace said. “We didn’t dispatch the city police for outside the city assistance.”

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