Committee formed to look at Lee County 911 service

LEESBURG — Upon hearing the news that long-time Lee County 911 Director Larry Hill will be calling it a career at the end of this month, the Lee County Board of Commissioners have coordinated a sit-down between the county’s public safety divisions to discuss the future operation of the 911 system.

At its regular meeting Tuesday, the commission passed a motion making Lt. Col. Chris Owens of the Lee Sheriff’s Office interim director of the 911 center for the next three weeks. The board also created a committee that will review the current 911 center operations.

That committee, which will comprise Owens, interim Public Safety Director Wesley Wells, and interim County Co-Managers Mike Sistrunk and Christi Dockery, will report its findings to the commission at its next scheduled meeting.

Approval of the motion followed a lengthy discussion between commissioners and Lee Sheriff Reggie Rachals, which stemmed from a last-minute agenda item asking for approval of an ordinance that would place the county’s 911 services under the direction of the Lee County Public Safety Department, which would comprise three divisions: Emergency Medical Services, Fire Services and E-911 Emergency Response.

“What this would do would return E-911 under the direction of all three stakeholders, so to speak,” said Commission Chairman Rick Muggridge.

Muggridge added that making the change would allow the county to look for ways to fund a new radio system that will be required if the county is to continue operating its 911 center. Motorola informed the county it will no longer service it’s exiting 850-megahertz system.

“We have authorized the purchase of the radio system,” Muggridge said. “Staff, myself, as well as y’all, are very concerned about how that might be paid for. One of the ways — a possible way — that we could capture some money is to perhaps look at the way we staff E-911.”

Muggridge called on commissioner Greg Frich, who assured those present that the purpose of the ordinance was not to allow the commission to have total control of the service, or to have the services outsourced.

“Just on the outset, 911 doesn’t belong to the sheriff any more than it belongs to the Board of Commissioners,” said Frich. “911 belongs to the people. It’s their means of crying for help. And they don’t just cry for help to the sheriff’s office. It also supports EMS, fire, code enforcement and public works. So it’s a much broader service delivery mechanism.”

“With the advent of Mr. Hill’s retirement I thought it would be an appropriate opportunity to take a look, an objective look, at how this 911 Call Center of Lee County supports our community and also supports the stakeholders that use it. This has got nothing to do with that nasty four-letter word, ‘outsourcing.’ Actually what this is is a means by which we can strengthen our internal control and our internal ownership of E-911.”

Although Commissioner Billy Mathis said he did not disagree with the idea of getting input from the various entities that are tied to 911 services, he did raise some concerns about the resolution presented.

“Two concerns that I have are, we only heard about this yesterday, that’s the first concern,” he said. “The second concern is it wasn’t on the agenda until we got to this meeting, so the public hasn’t had a chance to see that we’re going to discuss this. I’m not saying all these things aren’t great ideas, but I just think the public should have an opportunity to know and they haven’t had that yet. The old rule on the commission was, you put something on the agenda prior to the folks coming to the meeting so they’d know what we were doing.”

After the first motion died for lack of a second, Commissioner Dennis Roland presented a motion that the commission “leave E-911 under the sheriff at this time.”

Before a vote could be taken, however, Mathis raised an additional concern that the sheriff had not been given time to review 911 center operations, looking at overtime and other cost concerns, despite the commission having given him six months to do that.

“I though that’s what we were going to let the sheriff do, have six months or seven, to do what we asked him to do. That’s what I heard some time ago,” Mathis said. “Rick, you said your concern earlier was to find some way to pay for the radios. When I heard of this yesterday, I had a conversation with Mike and Christi, and I said, ‘Has anybody gone to the sheriff and sat down with him, talked to the sheriff and come up with some kind of ideas, some of the thoughts we’ve had just bouncing around in the past about running two consoles instead of four, and cutting out overtime and all that?’ It’s my understanding that none of that has been done. I just see the commission has not really done a very good job of communicating with the sheriff about the specifics.”

At that point, Frich interjected that the commission should sit down with the sheriff and the other stakeholders and in three weeks make a decision about how to proceed. Commissioner Luke Singletary raised the point that if the center is under the direction of the sheriff’s office, then the commission couldn’t rightly demand any kind of meeting.

“The E-911 director is a department head underneath a constitutional officer, so for us to have a communication and tell them how to run their department, I think is a little bit out of order,” said Singletary. “For our input to be there, it’s more of a request than it is any kind of official input.”

Rachals, who was in attendance, agreed with Mathis, saying that he was open to discussion, even if he preferred that the 911 center remain under the control of his office. He was more concerned with the idea of 911 being outsourced.

“I’d love to keep it like it is with it being at the sheriff’s office and the sheriff being, not in total control, we all have to have a grip on it,” said Rachals. “But we all need to come to this common goal and keep this thing here in Lee County because we keep that personal touch with our people.”

While no one seemed to disagree with the notion that the service needs to remain in Lee County, it was eventually discovered through discussions with County Attorney Jimmy Skipper that there is nothing currently in the county’s ordinances that designates the 911 center as being under the direction of the sheriff, which caused further confusion.

Roland’s motion to leave the 911 service under the sheriff’s department, despite Singletary’s assertion that the motion was “irrelevant” — considering the fact that according to the county attorney the sheriff’s department is not over 911 — was defeated 2-3, with Roland and Mathis voting for and Singletary, Frich and Muggridge voting against.

Following that vote, another motion was put forth by Frich asking for the committee to be formed to look at 911 services and report to the commission at its next meeting, which was seconded by Mathis. Although that motion was passed, there was no discussion pertaining to when the committee will meet.

In other matters, the commission voted unanimously to approve the new county millage rate of 14.121 mills, which represents a slight rollback from last year’s millage rate of 14.177 mills.

The commission also unanimously agreed to a slight change in the memorandum of understand between the county, the Lee County Development Authority, the Lee County Recreation Authority, and the other parties involved in the development of the new 50-bed hospital that’s slated to be built on what is now Grand Island Golf Course.

According to Skipper, the change is minimal and concerns the order in which certain funding will be spent. It does not represent any material change to the agreement. Skipper also reminded the commission that what is in place at this point is an MOU and not a binding contract.

Commissioners also voted unanimously to approve a list of vehicles to be declared surplus, and to gift an unused vehicle to Atkinson County. The vehicle in question is a six-wheel military dump truck that was no longer being used at the county landfill.

The commission also voted unanimously to approve an encroachment agreement with Georgia Power in relation to county infrastructure improvement projects and to approve the ACCG Workers Compensation Fund Safety Discount.

Additionally, commissioners voted unanimously to appoint interim Public Safety Director Wesley Wells as deputy EMA director.