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Board approves increase of 911 surcharge

ALPENA — A surcharge for 911 services was approved by the Alpena County Board of Commissioners Finance Committee on Wednesday. The charge will change from $2.75 to $3 a month to people who have landlines within the county.

“I’m recommending my request to increase the 911 surcharge from $2.75 to $3,” Emergency Services Coordinator/911 Director Burt Francisco said. “This increase was approved previously by ballot initiative. The commissioners in the past decided to not initiate or go ahead with the increase to $3. The reason I’m asking now is we recognize that we are going to upgrade our central dispatch systems in the future. When is that going to be? My crystal ball is not that clear.”

Francisco knows the Federal Communications Commission will narrow bandwidth once again, which will impact the quality of communications.

“What I’m attempting to do is to generate funds and do an account so when the time comes that we have to upgrade to the Michigan Public Safety Communications System that the financial impact will be minimized as much as possible. The raise will generate about $75,600 for a year. That would go into an account to minimize costs in the future,” he said.

When asked by Commissioner John Kozlowski how this number was calculated, Francisco said it was a previously identified number in 2016 from the Michigan State 911 Commission.

Commissioner Cam Habermehl said when the county priced out the radio system it came out at $2.1 million, then the price went down to $1.5 million.

“The payments, if we have to borrow the money, they were $150,000 over a 10 year period and the radios, usually seven years is the lifespan of it, so you have some equipment that’s no good in six or seven years and you still have three years worth of payment. We told Motorola we weren’t interested with that, but we may have to plan in the future. We might have a year, four years or five years. We do need to get some money set aside so we don’t go out and borrow the whole thing,” Habermehl said.

The motion passed with a 4-0 vote.

The board also passed the purchase of chairs for the emergency operations center at $1,000.

Jordan Spence can be reached via email at jspence@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5687.

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