E911 rate increases to be added to phone bills

By CHARLES W. JOHNSON / News Editor for the Southern Standard

GABLE

A Warren County E911 rate increase that would have added 85 cents to the E911 surcharge on residential phone lines and $1 on business lines wasn’t entirely approved.

During a recent state hearing with Tennessee’s Emergency Communications Board (ECB), local E911 director Brandon Gable and district board chairman Mark Gribble presented the proposal to the legislative body which controls emergency communication rate structures across the state. The ECB only partially approved the higher rates.

The current rates of 65 cents for residential and $2 for businesses had not been increased since the local E911 district was formed in 1990.

“Warren County 911 hasn’t changed their rates since day one,” Gable said. “So basically we’ve been trying to operate on the same amount of money for the last 13 years, and it’s gotten to the point where we can’t do that anymore.

“We are operating on equipment that has been here since we first opened. We haven’t upgraded our radio equipment. We haven’t upgraded our 911 equipment.”

Though Gable says the equipment is still very functional, it is getting harder to find parts to repair it and upgrades would help alleviate that problem as well as improve 911 service – something he hoped local residents and businesses would recognize as being of major importance to safety when the approved rates go into effect. The new rates will amount to an increase of $12 a year for businesses and a little over $4 for residences which will be reflected on their phone bills.

“That’s some of the cheapest and best insurance you can get,” Gable said.

The proposal originally asked for an 85-cent increase on the current 65 cents for residential phones, raising it to $1.50 per month, and a $1 increase on the current $2 for businesses bringing that up to $3 per month. Even though the ECB sent them home with the full $1 increase for business phones, E911 only got a 35-cent increase for residential phones – 50 cents less than had been requested.

“The reason for that was we did not have an intergovernmental agreement showing that the city and county would fund us up to $100,000,” said Gribble. “We went to the city and county, if you’ll remember, and asked in our intergovernmental agreement to put a minimum of $100,000 and they wouldn’t go along with that.”

As a result, the rate increase is not permanent and will have to be re-negotiated in three years. In addition, the ECB basically mandated the funding levels as Gable explained to the board.

“It’s conditional based upon continued funding at the current rate from the city and the county,” Gable said. “The figure that they threw out was $245,000 combined from city and county, so it breaks down to $122,500 each.”

Gable did point out the ECB funding mandate actually represented a decrease from last year’s budget for E911, but also explained that if the funding dropped below the mandated levels during the next three years, the rate increase would become void and E911 would lose that extra funding.

Gable said the reduced rate increase the ECB did approve would still provide a significant amount of extra funding and go a long way to upgrading the local facility.

The new rates for the next three years will go into effect July 1.

E911 rate increases
• Residential phone lines will be charged an extra 35 cents, amounting to just over $4 a year
• Business phone lines will have an additional $1 surcharge, amounting to $12 a year
• The charges will be added to monthly phone bills beginning in July