Whitfield 911 may soon not be self-supporting

Published 11:05 pm Saturday, March 28, 2015

For years, Whitfield County’s 911 system has been self-supporting, and the county hasn’t had to dip into general revenues to fund it. But officials say this could be the last year they won’t have to cover part of the system’s budget with general revenues.

“Our 911 fund balance has been dwindling, and right now we are set to exhaust our fund balance,” said county Finance Director Alicia Vaughn.

The 911 fund is a separate fund from the county’s general fund because it receives dedicated revenue that can be spent only on the 911 system.

“We get $1.50 per landline and $1.50 for cellphones (each per month),” Vaughn said. “We also get 75 cents (per transaction) for prepaid plans.”

The fees for landlines and for cellphones are paid directly to the county each month and are based on the billing address of the phones. The fees for prepaid plans are collected by the state and distributed to counties, based on population, once each year. The state takes 3 percent off the top of the prepaid fees before remitting them to the counties for its costs.

“911 has always supported itself. That’s not going to be the case anymore,” said Vaughn.

911 telephone fee revenues dropped to $1.6 million in 2012 from $1.7 million in 2010. They’ve since risen back to $1.7 million. Meanwhile, 911 expenditures have grown from $1.68 million in 2011 to $1.96 million in 2013 to a projected $2 million in 2014.

“Our revenues are not covering our expenditures. We’ve been using the 911 fund balance to cover that. We’ll be fine in 2015, but going into 2016 we are projecting we will run out of fund balance and the difference between expenditures and revenue will have to be covered by the general fund,” Vaughn said.

Current projections indicate the general fund would have to provide about $310,000.

“But going forward into 2017 and beyond it could cost half a million to $600,000,” Vaughn said.

The cost of operating the 911 system is basically personnel. That means funds from the recently approved Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) cannot be used to cover the difference, since it cannot legally be used to fund such operating costs, only capital expenses.

“One thing we were worried about is that people will think that this is related to the purchase of the new radio (communications) system (as part of the SPLOST), and it’s totally unrelated,” Vaughn said.

Vaughn says Whitfield County has been lucky. Most other Georgia counties have long had to cover part of their 911 expenses with general revenue funds.

911 typically comes in under budget because it is budgeted for a full staff but high turnover means that it typically doesn’t have full staff.

“The job is stressful,” said Whitfield 911 Deputy Director Scott Czerneski. “Plus, we have to maintain people on call to make sure we have adequate staffing, so even on their off days people are on call. And then there’s ongoing training. We sometimes have to be in court. It all adds to the stress.”

“We are slated to have a minimum of five personnel on each of four shifts. Currently, three of those shifts only have four, so we have to bring someone in to cover those shifts,” he said.

The 911 Center currently has 17 employees including trainers and supervisors. If it was at full staff, it would have 28.

Whitfield County officials are also keeping an eye on state law and how it might affect their finances.

A bill introduced by state Rep. Don Parsons, R-Marietta, earlier this year would have changed the way landline and cellphone fees are collected. Instead of paying them directly to counties, vendors would pay them to the state, which would then dispense them to the counties based on population.

Whitfield officials say one advantage of the plan would be that the state could audit those payments and make sure they are accurate. The downside is they do not know how the switch in payments based on the billing address to a county’s share of the population would affect the total revenues they collect.

That law was tabled after pushback from counties, but Parsons says he plans to reintroduce it next year.

Officials in Murray County did not immediately return telephone messages last week regarding their 911 system.