Regional dispatch endorsed Penobscot County panel adopts $10.2 million budget for 2002

BANGOR – Despite arguments that municipalities that aren’t members will be paying more for a service they aren’t using, members of the Penobscot County Budget Committee voted 6-5 Tuesday night in favor of rolling the cost for dispatch services into the county’s $10.2 million operating budget for the coming year.

The vote, which was as much a policy decision as it was a budgetary one, came at the end of the second of two county budget sessions conducted this month.

Though final figures still were being tallied, as things stood Tuesday night it appeared the county budget is headed for a more than $500,000 increase from the current $9,686,330 total. The increase, observed Chairman Richard Blanchard of the county commissioners, ranks among the highest the county has seen in several years.

Some factors contributing to the increase are rising insurance costs, the need to address pay issues blamed for the remarkably high attrition rate for county law enforcement and dispatching personnel and the need to set aside funds to cover the cost for boarding prisoners in jails outside the area when the Penobscot County Jail hits its capacity, something jail officials say has been occurring more and more frequently in recent years.

Though county budget panel members asked numerous questions about various budget items during their sessions last week and this week, the dispatch issue generated the most debate.

Since its inception in July 1997, the Penobscot Regional Communication Center’s operating budget has been funded by a combination of user fees and county funds. Participating cities and towns have been assessed a per capita service fee, which covered the lion’s share of the dispatch center’s operating budget. The county funded the balance.

According to dispatch director Cliff Wells, the county’s dispatch center has evolved to the point at which it now fields police, fire and ambulance calls for 70 percent of the county’s population. The exceptions are Bangor, Lincoln and Old Town, which handle their own calls. The Maine State Police, which has participated in a call-sharing program with the sheriff’s department for the past few years, also answers its own calls.

According to Wells, the $1,074,951 dispatch budget for next year – up $78,625 from this year’s total – includes funding for four new dispatchers and related equipment. The new people will be added to the current staff of 18. Those dispatchers, he said, are being brought on board to handle the existing workload, which has been increasing, Wells said.

The county dispatching budget does not reflect the facility renovations or the additional equipment and personnel that would be needed to accommodate new member municipalities, Wells said. Should Bangor, Old Town or Lincoln join after the start of the county’s fiscal year, which begins Jan. 1, the new costs would be covered by the county’s undesignated fund balance, or surplus, which now stands at $1.8 million. County officials have authorized up to $450,000 to that end.

During his pitch to the budget committee, Wells said the idea behind the regional service was to save county taxpayers money by avoiding the duplication of services and because it is becoming increasingly costly to fulfill state emergency dispatching requirements.

Not surprisingly, the measure proved unpopular with some representatives of the communities not on board. Concerns cited Tuesday night included the higher cost for a county service already being provided locally and the loss of local control.

Though he acknowledged his community would save an estimated $200,000 by joining the cooperative county effort, Old Town City Councilor Scott Cates said that when the notion of joining dispatch was discussed at a recent public hearing, townspeople turned out in full force to oppose it. He further said that the change in financing the center budgeting amounted to “strong-arming” the cash-strapped city into joining. He warned that Old Town councilors recently voted unanimously to look into their legal avenues and to seek the support of their legislative delegation to fight the move.

“It was an unfunded state mandate to begin with and now it’s going to be an unfunded mandate from the county,” said James Libby, a budget committee member representing Lincoln. “We can’t afford to do both.” He also cited concerns about the quality of service county dispatch provides. “Their system is not what it’s cracked up to be. … This thing’s getting bigger every year and its not necessarily getting better.”

Bangor City Councilor Dan Tremble, who along with fellow Councilor Joseph Baldacci served on the budget committee, added that while he was comfortable voting on the dispatch budget, he was leery of committing the city to a conceptual change that had yet to be considered by the full council. Given the outcome of Tuesday’s vote, however, Bangor officials said it is quite likely they will revisit the issue in the coming months.

Tremble attempted to get the 11 budget committee members to vote on the budget and the funding method in separate motions but was not successful.