In tonight’s City Council meeting, Councilman Tim Pape (5th-D), proposed that the City should turn operations of the 911 call center over to the County.
Pape had just asked about the budget of the call center and then sated, “I’m wondering if we can just do what the County did with the bridges, and say we can’t afford it any more…” Â He then went on to suggest turning it over to the County citing their earlier abdication of bridge responsibility as the precedence. Â Anyway, I’ll let the full audio recording speak for itself. Â I will warn you that Councilman Tim Pape speaks, then Councilwoman Liz Brown comments. Â She went on to ask some questions of City Controller Pat Roller who was in front of the Council at the time. Â At the 2:23 mark, Pape responds to Brown’s comments, almost it will seem without pause, but the reality was there was some unrelated discussion between. Â Later in the meeting, Pape stated he was half-serious about his proposal.
 mp3 audio file of Pape’s comments
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To turn the 911 system over to a politician (sheriff) would be a mistake. The only effective way to make this happen is to create a board with the City police, County sheriff, fire and EMS members. The board then appoints a “director” who runs the PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points). All employees are seperate from either/ all agencies on the board.
Combine the 911 fees, tear down the “glass wall” and learn how to get along while helping make the entire area safer instead of bickering over who has the “power”.