Mahaska County Supervisors Make Decision For 911 Funding

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The discussion about the funding and potential future of 911 services and its funding continued Monday during the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors meeting.

“The conversation is getting more intense as we go along,” said Mark Groenendyk, chair of the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors, and the process taking place to find a funding solution that will fund 911 starting July 1st, 2021.

The Supervisors question Emergency Management’s function and if their mission involves services like dispatching first responders within the county and its ability to levy for those purposes.

Mahaska County Attorney Andrew Ritland offered up using mediation between the Board of Supervisors and the E911 Service Board, and the Mahaska County Emergency Management Commission to help develop the funding plan for the next fiscal year and what may come after that.

Supervisor Steve Wanders was concerned that any mediation would come to an illegal agreement in his view.

Ritland explained that other counties still use 28E agreements similar to what Mahaska County had used, and the District Court found illegal. He explained that there is “currently no legal clarity as to what is the right or permissible method.”

“You can’t guarantee a particular outcome,” said Ritland to Wanders, concerning having some guarantee for a court decision.

The idea of using an outside service to handle dispatch within the county then may provide a cheaper alternative to utilizing a local public-safety answering point or PSAP.

An example of an outside PSAP would be utilizing services like those provided by organizations like Westcom Emergency Communications.

Wanders said that he believes that regional dispatch centers are coming in the future.

“Westcom is doing it. I’m sure they have fairly good service, and they’re doing it for half of what we are. So there has to be some advantage to regionalizing this stuff,” added Wanders.

Ritland said there was potential risk or reward to each side in the funding argument and potential litigation. “A voluntary agreement in the middle is always the best.”

“I would really encourage the board to at least, you know, consider doing some sort of mediation,” Ritland added.

“I’ve said in the very beginning that when there is a breakdown of trust, everything kind of gets thrown away, right?” Ritland said to the board about the current state of affairs between the Supervisors and the two boards.

“When there’s no trust, you cannot write a legal argument or a legal document proof enough to not get hurt one way or the other,” said Groenendyk. “So the question goes is why are, why are we in bed with somebody we don’t really trust, right? They want us to get in bed with someone they don’t trust? You can’t write a document secure enough to cover yourself.”

“I think for the good of the county, overall good of the county, there needs to be trust among the parties,” said Ritland. “We’re not, you know, enemies. We’re all gonna have the same basic general concern. We all want to see the residents of Mahaska prosper. We all want to see the protection of assets and people. We all want to see business come into the county. We all have the same general goals. I don’t believe anyone wants to see the destruction of a county, right. Even though we have the same basic values, the same basic desires, the lack of trust has kind of caused these rifts. It seems that we have a lot of pain points, not just in this, but in many topics. There’s a lot of unnecessary pain points.”

“So the way you build that [trust] is through these kinds of voluntary agreements. Other things, going through litigation, isn’t going to, you know, create more trust in all the parties. It’s just going to probably further entrench the sides and further lead to harder feelings and, you know, keep creating an atmosphere of conflict,” said Ritland. “Any possibility of avoiding litigation, I would strongly encourage it. It’s not a great mechanism for, you know, resolving problems.”

Groenendyk agreed, saying, “I think the last two times, we all agree we had no other choice to try and fix the error because we weren’t getting anywhere else. But moving forward, you’re right, there’s got to be more and better communication, understand, or we’re back to square one again.”

Wanders said he agreed to try mediation. “I think he’s [Ritland] got his heart into it.”

Supervisor Chuck Webb agreed, saying, “[If] we do go back to court; that’ll look good on our side. We tried.”

The Board agreed to pay $350,000.00 to fund 911 services for the remaining fiscal year ending June 30th, 2021.