KALAMAZOO (WKZO-AM/FM) — Voters in Kalamazoo County have resoundingly rejected a 911 surcharge as the way to fund consolidated emergency dispatch, batting down the proposition 18,470 to 11,225.
Organizers had hoped that absentee ballots that had been sent in before late opposition and the generally generous nature of local voters would give them the win, but it wasn’t even close.
“We will simply go back and begin reviewing alternative solutions with our partner agencies and local units of government,” Consolidated Dispatch Director Jeff Troyer said.
Opposition leader John Cross, President of the Fraternal Order of Police, called it a “money grab.”
You would have thought that the FOP would have been the one group with the most to gain from such a millage. Not only would communications between them, the public and other public safety providers have been improved, but they would have had access to much better information in the field, the kind that could make the job less dangerous.
The FOP also stood to gain new members if the sheriff’s department and the Kalamazoo and Township Police agencies had had extra money to hire new officers, as they planned to do.
The Chairperson of the Kalamazoo County Consolidated Dispatch Authority, Jan Van Der Kley, issued a statement saying they will be seeking other “funding mechanisms to consolidate 911 services in Kalamazoo County.”
There are compelling reasons at this time to combine the emergency dispatch center, including the need to significantly upgrade their equipment from analog to digital.
While most of the nation’s phone users have gone digital, the county’s five systems are growing more and more obsolete and they will need to make upgrades. Doing it for one center will be far less expensive than each of five 911 dispatch centers doing it separately.
Troyer said, while there is no “plan B” for funding, they do have options which include pooling the money the five authority members now spend on separate centers together to fund a consolidated facility. That doesn’t need voter approval.
The authority is scheduled to meet next week to begin those discussions.
Additional electionr results from Tuesday night can be found here.
