Linn supervisors look to impose police dispatch fees on 4 cities

CEDAR RAPIDS - What do property owners in Linn County's smaller cities get for the portion of their tax bills that goes to the county?

That is among the questions being debated as the Board of Supervisors looks to impose an annual fee on Hiawatha, Robins, Mount Vernon and Lisbon to help pay for the cost of calls handled by Linn County Sheriff's Office dispatchers.

The four cities are in the county's crosshairs for the fee because they have their own police departments and - unlike Cedar Rapids and Marion, which have their own police dispatch operations - they rely on the Linn County sheriff's dispatch operation to handle their emergency calls for service.

So far, the 11 other small cities in Linn County aren't facing a new dispatch fee because they contract to have the Sheriff's Office provide law enforcement services inside their cities for a set number of hours a week or month. The $32 an hour fee includes dispatch costs, Sheriff Brian Gardner said.

But those communities may not be off the hook.

One thing is clear: The four cities facing the new fee aren't happy about it, a fact Gardner acknowledged.

'They all agreed that we needed more dispatchers, but they don't want to be required to pay for it,” he said. 'That was kind of a resounding theme.”

Gardner first approached the supervisors a year ago about what he said was the 'overwhelming” workload his office's dispatch center has been facing.

The sheriff was seeking to add four dispatchers to the staff of nine. He proposed the fee to cover the cost of about $225,000 with salaries and benefits.

The supervisors agreed to fund two new dispatchers for the budget year that began July 1, and alerted the four cities they will be expected to pay a dispatch fee at the start of the next fiscal year.

The supervisors now are working on their next budget, and Gardner wants to hire two additional dispatchers to get his staffing in line with the workload, he said.

He has had two dispatchers to handle each shift, but he said he wants to be able to have three dispatchers on duty most times, and especially during the busy shifts.

'The public safety community agrees with me,” Gardner said. 'Sometimes we have to ask them to stand by, and sometimes they can tell we're overwhelmed. They can just hear the radio traffic that's going on.”

Even so, Robins Mayor Chuck Hinz said the expense of more county dispatchers is a 'countywide safety issue,” and he said the supervisors should increase their own annual tax levy instead.

'Charging the cities a fee, that's sort of like an additional tax,” Hinz said. 'But it's not called a tax, it's called a fee.” The proposed annual fee for Robins is $20,900.

The Robins mayor said the four small cities with their own police departments that depend on county dispatch services have officers who get to know residents and residents who get to know the officers. He said such 'community-based policing” means fewer calls for service. In effect, the four cities already are saving the Sheriff's Office money, Hinz said.

Linn County Auditor Joel Miller, a former Robins mayor, said the supervisors shouldn't look to raise the fees in a vacuum.

Instead, Miller said the county needs to review its contracts for patrol services with the 11 cities in the county without police departments and adjust the $32-an-hour rate to something closer to actual cost.

Miller's analysis puts the cost at $41.13 per hour, a figure Sheriff Gardner said is likely closer to the real costs.

Gardner said he has increased the hourly fee about $1 a year for the last seven years, but he has not wanted to increase it more rapidly and have cities cut service.

'So there has to be kind of a reasonableness dance that the Sheriff's Office and the communities have to make sure we're contracting for the proper hours and they're able to pay for them at the same time,” the sheriff said.

The four smaller cities with police departments said they are looking for reasonableness, too.

Hiawatha City Council member Dick Olson said the proposed fee for the city, $134,310 a year, is 'a pretty big number that clearly is outside” Hiawatha's budget.

According to Gardner's analysis, Mount Vernon has 5.21 percent of the dispatch center calls; Hiawatha, 12.21 percent; Lisbon, 2.97 percent; and Robins, 1.9 percent; with 77.71 percent for the Sheriff's Office calls.

Mount Vernon Police Chief Doug Shannon said Mount Vernon residents already pay taxes to the county to cover the dispatch services as part of the $193,646 of county tax dollars from Mount Vernon property owners that go to the Sheriff's Office now.

Next door in Lisbon, Connie Meier, the city administrator and city clerk, said of the proposal: 'We don't understand where that is fair.”

She said the proposed annual fee of $32,670 for Lisbon would force the city to reduce its police force from three officers to two.

Linn County Supervisor Brent Oleson said the Sheriff Office's dispatch service has been a free service that the county no longer can afford to pay for itself. The 11 smaller communities under contract for Sheriff's Office patrol service already are paying the dispatch fee through their contracts, he said.

Oleson said, too, that Cedar Rapids and Marion also have police dispatch centers. Anyone displeased with the proposed county dispatch fee can shop around there for a better deal, he said.

Supervisor John Harris, whose district includes much of the county outside of Cedar Rapids and Marion and includes the four cities facing the new fees, said a committee representing the county and the cities will meet again in the weeks ahead.

Harris said he is waiting for the Sheriff's Office to pinpoint its actual cost to provide contract services to the 11 small towns without police departments so he has a better idea of who should share what costs, he said.

'We need to try to be equitable,” Harris said.