Linn County Sheriff gets cool reception from cities about dispatch fees

CEDAR RAPIDS - Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner wants four cities and their own police departments that depend on his office's emergency dispatchers to help pay the bills for the first time.

City officials in Hiawatha, Mount Vernon, and Lisbon aren't interested, Gardner said on Tuesday. And he said those in Robins have said they are willing to pay $4,463 a year, which is one-quarter of what Gardner has figured is Robins' share of his office's dispatch expense.

For now, none of the four cities will have to pay anything.

On Tuesday, the Linn County Board of Supervisors agreed to continue to cover all the sheriff's dispatch costs, which are $1.03 million in the current fiscal year and will increase to add two additional dispatchers in the new fiscal year.

The Sheriff's Department currently employs 9 dispatchers, and Gardner wants to eventually increase the number to 13 so three dispatchers are on duty per shift.

Hiring two new dispatchers in the budget year beginning July 1 will cost the county an additional $78,000 a year, which includes $56,816 in salary and benefits for each employee minus about money now paid in overtime that won't need to be paid out because of the addition of two dispatchers, according to Dawn Jindrich, the county's budget director.

Other small towns in Linn County contract with the Sheriff's Department for law enforcement services and the cost of dispatch services are factored into those contracts, Gardner said.

In his analysis of calls to the department's dispatch center, 78.22 percent of the calls handled by the department's dispatchers are for sheriff's calls while 12.19 percent are for Hiawatha police calls, 4.81 percent for Mount Vernon police calls, 3 percent for Lisbon police calls and 1.78 percent for Robins police calls.

Mount Vernon Mayor Jim Moore on Tuesday said residents in Mount Vernon are already paying taxes to Linn County that should cover the sheriff's cost for dispatch services.

'For these small communities to put that extra into their budget … I don't know where it's supposed to come from,” Moore said.

Gardner's proposal to the four cities was to have each pay 25 percent of the costs of their calls the first year, 50 percent the second year and 75 percent the third year before assuming the full cost in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2020, and the years afterward.

Under the sheriff's proposal, the dispatch costs would start at $31,481 a year for Hiawatha and grow to $125,924 a year in the fourth year and for the years afterward; for Mount Vernon, the costs would start at $12,421 a year and grow to $49,684 a year; and similar figures for Lisbon would be $7,523 a year and $30,092 a year and for Robins, $4,463 a year and $17,852 a year by the fiscal year starting July 1, 2020.

Linda Langston, chairwoman of the Linn County Board of Supervisors, said Tuesday that the supervisors will assume all dispatcher calls for the next two budget years. At the same time, the supervisors plan to send the four cities a letter to ask them to prepare in the future to help out with costs.

Not so many years ago, the cities of Cedar Rapids and Marion and Linn County spent some discussing the possibility of combining their individual law enforcement dispatch centers into one. It never happened.

Gardner on Tuesday said having three dispatch centers provides much-needed backup and duplication.