“It’s probably going to be implemented with giving them time to put it in next year’s budget,” Commissioner Don Dixon said. “There’ll be some adjustments for some who’ve paid and some who haven’t, we’ll get it worked out.”
Commissioner T.C. Rogers agreed with Dixon.
“We’re going to charge it,” Rogers said. “But we’ll wait until next year so they’ll be able to put it in their budgets.”
Several communities balked last year when they learned Sheriff Richard Jones intended to charge them for dispatching police calls, when some other communities get the service for free. Chief Deputy Anthony Dwyer said preliminary estimates were: Fairfield ($219,638), Oxford ($34,651) and Ross ($75,780) townships, the villages of New Miami ($47,542) and Seven Mile ($5,764) and MetroParks ($6,999).
Fairfield Twp. Police Chief Bob Chabali told the Journal-News he is ready to pay his bill as soon as the commissioners draw up a memorandum of understanding. Oxford Twp. has already paid three monthly installments of $2,887, according to Dwyer, who added that MetroParks has indicated it will pay pay upon receipt of the paperwork.
Other jurisdictions say they can’t afford the new fees and that other entities without police departments should be paying as well.
The fees would constitute $390,374 in new revenue for the sheriff’s office budget. The office is already collecting a total of $1.5 million from Hamilton and Oxford for dispatching, fees that have been for years. The dispatch budget is nearly $4 million.
Ross Twp. Trustee Tom Willsey has said he might have to ask taxpayers for more money for the police department because the $75,780 bill is about 10% of the township’s police budget. He likened the situation to former Gov. John Kasich cutting local government funding to fill a giant budget hole when he was in office.
“I think if there’s a budget shortfall let’s work on it, identify it and find a way to fix it that’s fair and equitable to everybody,” Willsey said. “This reminds me of John Kasich (saying), ‘I’ve got an $8 billion hole in my budget so I’m going to balance it without raising taxes.’ So if you guys balance your budget without raising taxes, guess who gets to raise taxes? Me again.”
Officials have said it is not a budget balancing move but a fairness issue. The sheriff’s office $40 million budget for this year is balanced.
“The county is not trying to fill a hole in their budget, the county has a balanced budget, that is not even remotely accurate,” Dwyer said. “This is not about acquiring monies from others to fill a hole, this is about the fairness and equitable nature of dispatch services.”
The issue of fairness came up several years ago after Oxford agreed to relinquish its dispatch center. In 2012, the state mandated that counties reduce the number of dispatch centers they operate or risk losing half of their wireless 911 and Next Generation 911 state funding, which was about $400,000 back then.
Hamilton was the first to surrender its center in 2013, partly because of the mandate but also as a cost-saving measure during difficult budget times. Oxford gave up its dispatch center in 2016, which was enough to satisfy the state mandate.
Oxford agreed to pay the sheriff about $330,000 for dispatch, and City Manager Doug Elliott at the time said it wasn’t fair other agencies were getting the service for free. He told the commissioners this week nothing has changed.
“I raised this issue and I know it’s going to be a difficult one for everyone because no one wants to start paying for something that they’ve received without charge for many, many years,” Elliott told the commissioners. “I know especially in this pandemic it’s a difficult time to do that, but I think we all agree it’s an issue of fairness.”
Seven Mile Mayor Vivian Gorsuch told the commissioners the numbers used to calculate their estimated $5,764 bill are not fair because they are based on 2019 calls for service yet they have fewer police officers and the actual calls from last year during the height of the pandemic would be considerably lower. Dwyer said he is willing to revisit the call volume issue if jurisdictions don’t believe the figures are accurate.
Gorsuch told the Journal-News the reason her tiny village maintains its own police is simple, sheriff’s deputies don’t enforce local ordinances and they aren’t familiar with potential trouble spots, “it’s community policing basically.”
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