The Columbus City Council sent a clear message to Lowndes County supervisors Tuesday regarding its proposed realignment of the E911 board. The message: Give Columbus a voice on the board or face the possibility of losing city funds.
The council tabled a measure to accept the county’s realignment of the E911 board — which would give the city’s police and fire chiefs non-voting positions on a nine-member board — and told County Administrator Ralph Billingsley the city wanted those two positions to have voting power. Supervisors voted April 15 on realigning the board to include five voting members from each county supervisor district and four non-voting members to include the Columbus police and fire chiefs, a sheriff’s department representative and a Emergency Management agency designee.
Councilmen Charlie Box and Bill Gavin, of Wards 3 and 6, pressed the issue with Billingsley, who appeared before the council in Tuesday’s meeting to present the agenda item. Gavin noted the county’s legal responsibility to operate E911 with or without city funding assistance. Yet, he said the city pays half — about $125,000 per year — of the E911 costs and noted the city could pull its funding for E911 at any time and leave the county holding the bag.
“If we’re paying half the bill, we should have some voting members,” Gavin said.
Billingsley, in return, acknowledged the city could legally do that. However, he added that the city had not had a voting representative on the E911 board in years, and even though the city pays half the E911 costs, far more than 50 percent of its use involves city departments.
Billingsley said that E911’s board originally had only five members, all of whom had voting power and were appointed from the five supervisor districts. Over time, the board added two more members, including the city police chief. But Billingsley said the police chief hadn’t served as a board member in “a number of years” and an at-large county representative had been filling that slot.
Box moved to table the issue until supervisors answered the city’s request making the police and fire chiefs voting members, which gained unanimous approval. Billingsley agreed to take the matter to the supervisors.
After the meeting, Mayor Robert Smith told The Dispatch he would understand if the council slashed its appropriation for E911 next year if the county refused the city’s request for voting members.
“It’s a lot like taxation without representation,” he said. “You can accept our money, but when it comes to voting on issues, we have no voice. (If it remains that way), when they come to us for appropriations and equipment, I think we’d have to strongly consider not appropriating.”
In other matters
On Tuesday, the council authorized issuing a 20-year tax increment financing (TIF) bond for up to $2.5 million for Mark Castleberry’s hotel project at Moore’s Creek Crossing.
A TIF allows government entities to use a certain percentage of sales and ad valorem tax revenue from a development to pay for public infrastructure needs — such as roads, water and sewer — at the development site. In the case of Moore’s Crossing, ad valorem and half of the sales tax generated from the Courtyard, Fairfield and Hampton Inns at the site will pay specifically for that infrastructure.
On Tuesday the council also:
■ approved closing 14th Avenue North, from 22nd Street North to Martin Luther King, for two weeks beginning April 27 for drainage work;
■ approved purchasing $28,000 in furniture for the Trotter Convention Center’s first- and second-floor lobbies, an expenditure not included in the project’s budget;
■ approved disposing of surplus property at Trotter Convention Center;
■ authorized Municipal Court to reapply for a Stop Violence Against Women Formula Grant; and
■ rezoned property at 1112 Military Road from single-family residential (R-1) to neighborhood commercial (C-1) and permitted the property owners to operate a food concession at the site for a year.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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