Time to fix our 911 emergency

Our View

Time to fix our 911 emergency

Our first thought regarding the call by Arkansas lawmakers asking Gov. Asa Hutchinson to include legislation to put a moratorium on the creation of new 911 answering call centers on the agenda of the upcoming special session was one of bewilderment.

That is until we delved into the reasoning behind this unusual request and realize how this critical public service has gotten completely out of control to the point the maintenance demands at these centers have increased at a faster rate than can be supported by the revenue from service fees that are added to all of our land-lines and cell phones.

In other words, what we are being charged each month isn’t keeping up with the cost of operating these centers.

Why? Well, that is because of the absolutely haphazard and uncontrolled manner in which the powers-tobe allow these centers to be created. Let’s lay out the facts by beginning with the revenue for maintenance and other reimbursements from 2010 to 2015. During this five year period there was a total of about $15.5 million set aside for maintenance and other reimbursements. Maintenance reimbursements, which are included in expenses, grew from $636,570 to $1,063,675 over that same period of time.

Similar to former Gov. Mike Beebe’s Blue Ribbon Committee on Highway Funding there is this socalled Blue Ribbon Committee that has mysteriously discovered that ballooning costs are partially due to the sheer number call centers that have been created throughout the state.

Now then, let’s point out that this committee has counted as many as 126 call centers in Arkansas.

Some are professionally staffed with new equipment, but others are deteriorating, and at least one answer center relies on the county jailer to man the phones.

And, by the way, local cities and counties have been behind creating these centers without any state oversight.

We find it astonishing that there are probably no other state that has more 911 call centers and trying to fund 126 such centers for just 75 counties. This is absolutely ridiculous.

It is obvious that there are clearly entirely too many of these 911 call centers that lawmakers should have recognized a long time ago. Why has it taken this situation to reach a financial crisis to do something?

Here in Crittenden County we have two such 911 centers, one located at the West Memphis Police Department and the other located at the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Office.

As we understand it, the center at the Sheriff’s Office was originally created to handle all 911 calls in all Crittenden County but, for some reason West Memphis officials decided to operate their own call center.

We would certainly think that combining the two could actually save money that could be better spent on upgrading equipment.

Based on what has been revealed there is no solid reason not to support this moratorium which will allow lawmakers and this committee to come up with recommendations that will not only reduce the number of current call centers but also make them more cost efficient.