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Roanoke Rapids City Council Tuesday night rejected a new interlocal agreement on 911 center funding approved by the county last week and will seek to negotiate a better rate than what the county has proposed.

Council passed two motions on the matter, both which passed on 3-2 margins with council members Carl Ferebee and Sandra Bryant casting the dissenting votes each time.

The first motion rejected the new agreement and the second was to invoke the current contract’s provision for a one-year termination notice which would be effective July 1, 2022.

City Attorney Geoffrey Davis stressed that invoking the termination would not mean the city is cut off from 911 dispatching.

In a memo explaining the matter he said, “Under current law, I do not see how the county could cut the city off from 911 dispatching. As I’ve discussed, the law clearly obligates the county 911 center to dispatch calls to the emergency services personnel in the field and they would continue to do so.

“If, irrespective of those laws and regulations, the county was to attempt to eliminate 911 dispatching for the city of Roanoke Rapids, I have no doubt that the city could seek an emergency court order to prevent them from doing so. So again, I say, regardless of how this plays out in the future, I do not believe there is any scenario that would result in the citizens of Roanoke Rapids losing 911 service.”

In the memo Davis outlined the history of how matter came to be on the table for consideration Tuesday.

Current agreement

The city had had an agreement with Halifax County to fund a portion of the county 911 center which was initially signed in 2004 and amended in 2013.

Every year the city pays an amount of money to the county for dispatching services which is determined as follows:

The county sets a budget for the 911 center

The county looks at the 911 center’s call volume for the prior year and computes the percentage of calls that went to each municipality’s emergency services

Each municipality pays an amount equal to their specific call volume percentage of the county’s budgeted costs

Under the current agreement the amount the city will owe the county for the 2021-2022 fiscal year is $352,497. 

Had the city opted to sign the new agreement it would pay $281,321.

Davis noted in the memo that the amount the city has had to pay under the old agreement has ballooned over the past seven fiscal years — from $225,390 in the year 2015-16; up to $356,394 for 2020-21; and to $352,497 for 2021-22.

Said Davis: “The reason for the increases after the 2016-2017 fiscal year are the sole result of the county’s increase in budgeted costs for the county 911 center. Again, under the current agreement, the final amount we pay is essentially based on how much the county budgets for the 911 center — not what it actually costs to run it.”

The current agreement has what Davis described as a basic one-year termination clause. “Therefore, if the city desires to exit it, the earliest that any termination could be effective would be beginning in the 2022-2023 fiscal year. Such a termination would need to be tendered by June 30, 2021 to be effective. The possibility of the city taking this action, essentially to use as leverage to hammer out a new agreement, is part of the motivation for addressing this matter at this time.”

County’s legal obligations regarding 911 service

Davis wrote in the memo that there is not, nor has there ever been, a provision in North Carolina law that sets out a formula such as the one he described. “That formula was the product of negotiations that took place between the county and municipalities prior to 2004. No one stepped in and said that either party had to make this specific agreement or dictated to us that it should be for that specific amount of funding or use this specific formula.”

Since the cost to the city has increased so dramatically over the last several fiscal years, Davis said he, the city manager and police chief began looking at options for negotiating a more fair agreement — “or at least one where the city could exert some control over the county’s budgeted costs.”

In preparing for this, the city attorney said the law pertaining to the obligation of 911 providers was examined. “What we discovered is that we can find no provision of North Carolina law that requires a municipality to pay a county for 911 dispatching services. I cannot emphasize this point enough — there is no provision of law that says we have to pay a dime to the county for 911 service.”

In fact, Davis wrote, state law places an affirmative obligation on a 911 center to take 911 calls, process them and to dispatch that call to the appropriate emergency responder on the ground.

Why the city agreed to pay for these services dates back to “the evolution of the requirement placed on 911 centers regarding dispatching,” Davis said. “As of 2004, when the current agreement originated, 911 centers were only required to process a call up to the point it was ready for dispatch.

“ … By virtue of operating a 911 center, Halifax County at the time only had to handle a 911 call up to the point they determined which agency it should go to,” Davis wrote. “The county wasn’t, at least at that time, required by law to dispatch it out to the individual emergency personnel on the ground. It stands to reason a city like Roanoke Rapids would need to contract with the county 911 center if the city did not want to have to perform this function for itself — if for no other reason than it would ensure a faster response to the emergency.”

Much has changed, however, in the operations of 911 centers, Davis said, including that North Carolina law now requires the centers to dispatch calls to individual emergency responders.

And, Davis wrote, as of 2013, the state passed a law requiring everyone to pay a fee on their monthly cell phone bill that is turned over to the county to cover the services. For the 2020-21 fiscal year, the county received $361,538.

“Thus, it is fair to say that city residents are already paying for the county 911 center every month when they write a check to pay their phone bill,” Davis said. “Indeed, throughout these discussions, several of the city personnel involved have stated it seems like at this point city residents are being taxed twice for 911 services — once because the state requires the fee on our cell phone bills and then again in light of the current agreement in place with the county.”

The new proposal

Davis said, regardless of the reduction in costs the new proposal brings, he advised against entering into the agreement.

The reasons for the advice are as follows:

The termination provision says if the city entered into the new agreement and then wanted to get out in a few years it could only do so by a county-wide referendum authorizing a tax increase to cover the costs of operating the center. The city would have to pay for the referendum.

“Considering how this would actually play out in the real world, the practical effect of this provision is to make it impossible for the city to exit this new agreement once entered,” Davis wrote. “It simply doesn’t make sense that the voting public of Halifax County, the majority of whom would live outside the city limits, would approve a new tax upon themselves. Thus, the kinds of negotiations that we’re having at this point with the county would not be happening since once the city entered the new agreement it would effectively be bound by it in perpetuity.”

And, the city attorney wrote, “As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a second aspect of the proposed agreement that is truly pernicious.”

That part, as with the current agreement, would base the city’s costs on a percentage of the county’s budgeted costs for 911 center personnel. “The keyword there is budgeted. The city’s payment would be based on budgeted costs, not its actual costs. So under this proposal there is no incentive for the county to control the 911 center’s budget. To the contrary, there is every incentive for the county to budget far beyond the actual costs it expects to actually pay for personnel since, under both the current and proposed agreement, the county keeps any difference between budgeted and actual costs. The city is not reimbursed for this difference.”

Davis encouraged the council “to think about the future potential costs to the city. “I would love for the city to save $71,000 this fiscal year but if you enter into this agreement as written for the foreseeable future the city will be forced to pay whatever amount the county arbitrarily determines, irrespective of the county’s actual costs. Moreover, the city will at that time have no practical way of exiting the agreement.”

The future

Davis and other city personnel have spent the past few months trying to negotiate a better agreement, he said. “After receiving this proposal, we have pushed back on the above provisions and suggested several alternative bases for determining the city’s funding support. Thus far, county personnel have rejected those proposals and the message that has come to me is that this is the best they’re willing to offer.”

Bryant comments

Halifax County Board of Commissioners Chairman Vernon Bryant said this morning that Roanoke Rapids was the first municipality to ask the county to take a look at the proposal. “How we treat Roanoke Rapids we have to treat the others the same,” he said. “Based on what they asked us to do, management came up with a recommendation with police calls.”

Bryant said the county has been put in a position in which it will have to pay substantially more for the center. “All municipalities have pretty much agreed to sign off. It looks like Roanoke Rapids may be the only ones not to.”

With a morning meeting coming up Monday, Bryant said the matter will be brought up. “We’re going to take a look at it. I don’t have a crystal ball on what the commissioners may do, but, however, we have done what we thought was in the best interest of all the municipalities and Halifax County. I am disappointed they didn’t sign off on it.”