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Don't Hang Up
By Wayne Trotter, Tecumseh Countywide News
We may never understand why the Pottawatomie County commissioners called an E 9-1-1 referendum for next Tuesday, then all but forgot about it. Instead of actively getting behind what they once felt was a good idea, they did nothing to promote it. They didn't do as much as form a private committee to raise just a little money and support the concept of extending enhanced 9-1-1 service to those citizens who don't now have it. All three commissioners are currently messing in partisan politics by endorsing a candidate in the District 27 race for the House of Representatives, but their silence on the E 9-1-1 issue has been deafening since they voted to put the question before the public.
The effect was to leave their E 9-1-1 proposal to fate ... and fate is generally unkind to unpromoted propositions which involve even a small tax increase. This one does. If by some unforeseen miracle the citizens who are being allowed to vote on this question approve it, monthly ground line phone rates in Tecumseh (the largest community left in this mix) will go up by less than 90 cents — pocket change to most users.
Contrast that to the way the commissioners twice reacted to the challenge of promoting the one-cent countywide sales tax, a much larger tax burden on the average individual. Faced with the financial inability to first keep up the roads and then build a new jail, the commissioners made sure a private committee was in place. Money was raised. Advertisements were prepared and published. The concept was promoted. After several false starts, the people of the county accepted the need and voted to tax themselves — and things really are much better because they did.
Voters in Tecumseh and most other areas which have a chance to participate won’t get much for their trouble since they already have the enhanced service, but those who live in more sparsely populated areas (about half the county geographically) would. They would finally receive the 9-1-1 protection already afforded to their more urbanized friends and neighbors. Their property and lives would become a little more secure. And the cold, hard fact is that these people need that protection more than people in the towns and cities because distance will always make emergency response times greater in rural sections of the county.
Yes, this is a mess. Voters in Shawnee won’t even get a chance to help their neighbors because the City Commission made that decision for them and kept the question off the ballot there. That means that if lightning strikes and this thing passes outside Shawnee, the county still won't have a consolidated system. There likely will be two, one in Shawnee and the other probably in Tecumseh. And because all those phones in Shawnee won't be part of this, the second system possibly will be tenuously financed.
Even before that, the Legislature wrote laws that translate into much lower tax rates for the urban areas. Shawnee ground line users currently pay about half what Tecumseh patrons shell out for 9-1-1 and if this proposition passes, that figure would go to about one-fourth. It’s not fair but it is the system and if Pottawatomie County wants to extend this vital service, it has to play within those rules.
To further complicate the picture, there will be two 9-1-1 questions on many ballots Tuesday. Voters across the county, including Shawnee, will get an opportunity to extend E 9-1-1 service to cell phone users at a modest monthly cost of 50 cents per cell phone, something that is really desirable to most cell phone users no matter where they live. Voters in the county outside Shawnee will also get to vote on extending the coverage area, albeit at the cost of extending the coverage area, albeit at the cost of slightly raising their own taxes.
Conventional wisdom says the cell phone proposal will pass and the extended ground line service won’t. We think that’s probably right, but we’re in favor of both anyway. The plan is far from perfect but it’s the best that exists and may be the only chance to extend the service for a long time to come. This isn’t a question of pennies, it’s a matter of protecting property and lives.
If you live in Shawnee, vote “yes” on the cell phone proposal Tuesday. If you live in the county outside Shawnee, don’t hang up on your friends and neighbors the way the Shawnee City Commission did for the sake of the cost of a cup of coffee a month. Sometimes a long shot is worth taking. Vote “yes” on both 9-1-1 propositions Tuesday.
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