Meeting of 2001-11-20 Special Meeting

Mayor Powell welcomed those in attendance and asked that everyone act in a professional manner, not getting involved in personalities, and he had heard this is mostly about safety and money or costs so he asked that comments be made about those two issues only. He called on the City Attorney for an announcement. Vincent said this was originally scheduled to be a joint meeting of the City Council and the County Commissioners, however due to a glitch in the system the County Commissioners were unable to get the agenda posted as required by the Open Meeting Act so this is just a meeting of the City Council.

Hanna said he had a couple of questions to ask the County Commissioner that is present. He asked how long ago E911 was approved. Gail Turner, Eastern District County Commissioner, said about seven years ago. Hanna asked if the County had been collecting revenue off of it for seven years and Turner said yes. Hanna asked why it was not implemented five or six years ago instead of it being laid on the City right now because he had received derogatory comments, phone calls from people in the County plus in the City as to why the City should pay for E911 for the County when the City itself already has E911; if the County has had the revenue all this time, this should have been implemented five or six years ago. Turner said 5% is collected from each County resident's phone bill and the account balance is $399,492 approximately, with an average annual collection of $86,000 that goes into this account and can be used for no other purpose. Turner said he had been in office for three years and had worked on this since he was elected but they face a complicated addressing situation and many other issues that had not been worked out.

Hanna said he wanted the County people to understand that it is not the City's fault that this has not been implemented; the County came to the City to ask for assistance to help share the cost or take the cost off their back if they have to put it in by themselves. Turner said no, that is a misunderstanding. Turner said the County Commissioners have come to the City Council to ask for negotiations on a 911 system; if it is a joint venture between the County and the City, the County would pay their part of the percentage of calls or whatever services the County would owe and use and it would not be a profit making or losing situation for the City or for the County. Turner said the County citizens would pay a percentage on the calls they had coming in through the system so it is not like a cost sharing but they are not looking at a profit or loss on the cost sharing for either side; the City has a system in effect and there are some cost advantages as to going with the City as far as the start up costs and experience level the City has so to give the County a better idea of the costs, they came to the City Council and the City's 911 system to get an idea of the cost to operate with the City, and then Sheriff Stradley had put together a cost estimate of what it would cost for the County to operate it. Turner said they had come to the City to see what it would cost and what the efficiencies would be and the safety to operate with the City or with the County so we are not blaming the City. Hanna said you could not prove it by him from the phone calls he had received. Turner said it would be more like a business contract for 911 services. Hanna said he hoped this would clarify things for a lot of people in the audience because there are all kinds of stories going back and forth.

Mayor Powell said we have seen that if the City does not take this then it would be put on the citizens of Lawton-Fort Sill's ad valorem taxes; we have seen that in print and we have heard it verbally. He said what he found out today was that right now the County is maxed out at 10.23 mils, and round it to 10 mils, and nothing can go on the ad valorem taxes at all unless it is a judgment; it would have to take a vote of the people to increase that milage right there. Mayor Powell said if there is anyone present that would refute that statement, he wished they would do so now because he got the information first hand from a County official, and we have heard this continuously that if there was an added cost, if it was kept independently, that whatever that cost would be, and we have heard figures from $97,000 to $125,000, that it would go on the citizens of the City's ad valorem taxes. Mayor Powell said he did not know how that got started or where it came from but according to an official from the County Courthouse today, he was advised that cannot happen, the only way that can be increased without a vote of the people would be if there is a judgment of some kind against the City. Mayor Powell asked again if there was anyone present who would like to refute that because he did not want to pass along anything that he had been told that was incorrect in the decision-making process, so if there was someone out there that had better knowledge than he had, he wished they would speak up at this time or accept that as the way that it is. Mayor Powell said the only reason he had checked on it was that someone had come to his office and passed that along and then he made a phone call and received that information.

Purcell said he had received a lot of phone calls on this too, and from his perspective as a member of the City Council, we do not particularly want the 911 system, we are not pushing to get it; the County Commissioners have asked us if we would consider combining because it saves money; it does save money, there is no question about that, whatever numbers you use it saves money. There was discussion from the audience as to the number and percentage of Lawton-Fort Sill residents versus those who live in Comanche County outside the City of Lawton. Purcell said whatever that number is of those who live in the County, all he was saying was he did not want the people in the City limits to have to pay any more money than they are paying now; Lawton has and pays for 911 service through 57 cents for every phone line, so he was concerned about protecting the citizens of Lawton and he was sorry, he was not concerned with protecting the County, he did not want to do harm to the County but he was not interested in protecting the County folks. Purcell said if the County residents wanted to pay triple what they are paying, if there was a way to do it, that would be okay with him, so that is where he is coming from as a City Council member. Purcell said if it costs the City any money, he would not be for combining, but we had worked it out so it would not cost Lawton any more money. Purcell said it was not a question of him wanting it, and that he did not think anyone on the Council wanted it per se, but if it could save money, and we have heard for years, let's cooperate with one entity to the other, here's a way to cooperate, if there is some good reason why we should not do it, then we need to hear that good reason and what he had heard so far has not been a reason, he did not know the reason why there was this big push not to combine, there is some reason but he had not figured it out yet and maybe tonight he would figure it out.

Mayor Powell said when there are future meetings, he would hope the Chief of Police would be involved in them, as well as management and legal counsel. He said one of the things he saw in the draft copy under 13 was the liability and what it says is that all responsibility and liability goes to the City, and we are not working as an independent arm of the County government but we accept all responsibilities and all liabilities, inclusive of if something happens out there, our legal staff will have to defend a suit. Mayor Powell said he felt that would eat up any funds received from the County in a very short period of time, so that was the reason he suggested those people be a part of the team that meets together. Mayor Powell asked if the Chief of Police was present and had anything to bring forward that would affect his department that had not been revealed.

Bill Adamson, Lawton Police Chief, said he did not have a dog in this fight except for the suggestion of transferring the County records to the Police Department; if that were to occur, then we would have to have in the contract where the County pays for an additional five clerks for the Police Department because of the work load of inputting all of that information and maintaining it for the County; that would be quite a burden. Adamson said he learned this afternoon that was not and had not been proposed, and understood that the proposal was that the Sheriff would still keep five clerks, meaning he could still maintain OLETS and his records; the dispatch would simply be moved over here in and of itself and if that is the case, it had absolutely no affect on him.

Mayor Powell asked if it was Adamson's understanding that the records would stay with the Sheriff's Department. Adamson said yes, that was his understanding from today. Mayor Powell asked if that was correct. Purcell said everyone is worried about the contract, forget the contract because the contract is going to change based on what is decided, we may throw the contract away if we decide not to merge, the contract is not final, it's been drafted, and no, he was not sure that was the right understanding, and he would get to this later when he talks to other people, the input into the system comes from the Sheriff's Department and the Police Department; the answer to the question that comes in when there is a question about NCIC or OLETS, that goes to the people that are working at the 911 place and they are the ones who give the answers. Adamson said the call from the field would go to the dispatch asking for a warrant check or a tag check on a stolen item, they would then enter that in NCIC but if it is a hit, if we get a hit on a stolen car, then the ORI, the originating source, has to be teletyped and is teletyped for a confirmation; that confirmation must be made in ten minutes and it must be made from a terminal that is manned by an OLETS trained person that has the hard copy present; once that is done, it has to be returned, they have to teletype back and confirm within ten minutes, that is why if the OLETS stays with the County, he has to have a clerk. Adamson said it was his understanding that the Sheriff's dispatchers currently function as his OLETS operators so that is the big rub, if that moves to the Police Department they would have to have additional people to handle that. Purcell said that had not been addressed in the draft contract and it still had to be worked out; they stopped work on the draft contract when all this flap came up because there was no need to work on a contract if it is not needed. Adamson said that too was his understanding, and when he heard what he did today, that part had never been discussed so that was why it was sort of a lightning bolt out of the sky when he heard that last week.

Mayor Powell said that is certainly pertinent information as far as he was concerned if they are now learning that if the records are transferred that the Chief would have to have five more people that would certainly enter into the cost effectiveness of whether the City participates in this or not. Adamson said to express this the way he understands it, the plan is to leave five people, the discussion was, not the contract, but the discussion was to leave five people at the County which would alleviate any need to transfer records and that was the way he wanted it.

Hanna said what he was hearing was that the Chief would need five people for the OLETS and NCIC and asked Doug Wells if he would need five people to run the E911 console also. Mayor Powell said that is if the records are transferred here. Hanna agreed and said everything is "if" right now. Hanna asked if the City gets the County E911, how many people would it take to operate it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Doug Wells, MIS Director, said five people. Hanna asked if it was five for the console and five more for the records. Wells said that had never been in discussion and he had always said to the County Commissioners that they would still have to keep five people down at the Sheriff's Department. Hanna said if the records are transferred to the Chief's office then that would take another five people. Wells said those five would be transferred from the Sheriff's office to the Police Department if that was the case.

Shanklin asked when everyone had gotten together and talked as far as our Police Chief and the Sheriff. Mayor Powell said they have not been a part of it and that was what he said earlier. Shanklin said that is what we need now. Mayor Powell said if they have another meeting, he thought that management, legal counsel and the Chief and MIS should be involved in the decision making process. Purcell said they were there. Devine said the only one that was not there was the Sheriff and he was not invited.

Jasper Grigg said he was a citizen of the City of Lawton which is a part of Comanche County. He said he hoped his being in the City did not change his objectivity and his thinking for the whole county because he is a member of the Excise Board for Comanche County. Grigg said he has no ax to grind, no turf to protect and he was charged by statute to see that every citizen in the county is treated justly, fairly and equitably, so he was present to say that he was concerned about the taxpayers' money, and the Mayor said one of the concerns was finances or money. Grigg said this thing has been analyzed by everybody and his dog and you will hear several more analyses tonight probably. He said he thought guard house lawyers, lawyers that have been admitted to the bar, newspaper editors and all of those people probably do not have the facts to analyze this as they think they do. Grigg said he believed Mr. Wells may be the only person in the room that had all of the information to do a decent analysis, and if Custer had analyzed the information that a large number of Indians were gathering at that place up north, he would not have taken 250 soldiers to surround 3,000 Indians. Grigg said we need to have the right figures to make a decent analysis and he thought we needed to worry about what is right, rather than who is right and that way good decisions can be made.

Grigg said from the analysis he had seen up to now he knew there was not enough money in the coffers; we have budgeted for the County every penny that the County Assessor and Treasurer have said we will get this year, so other than the E911 money that has been collected, which by law can only be 5% he thought, he did not know where the money would come from to pay the bill they had been told it would cost if they do not combine efforts. Grigg said he had talked to several counties in Alabama and other places and each and every one of them only have one system, although he had not checked every county in Oklahoma, so from a purely fiscal standpoint and a management standpoint he thought a single system was the way to go and he had not seen the management practices in the County that can handle the complication of E911. He said he had asked a lot of tough questions since he had been on the Excise Board and had gotten some good answers and some do not even bother to answer, but that was beside the point in this discussion. Grigg said he could not speak for the other members of the Excise Board but before he would sign his name on an appropriation for the County to run its own 911 system he would have to see a lot better, more precise figures.

Rick Sinnreich, 816 Ferris, said he was a citizen of Lawton and of Comanche County. He said the Mayor said at the introduction of the meeting that the two concerns were money and safety, and the person who spoke before him spoke better than he could to money, although he simply wanted to endorse what he had heard from several of the councilmen and that was he expected the Council to look at this from the point of view of the welfare of the citizens of Lawton. Sinnreich said he would speak briefly about the second aspect and that is safety. He said there was a saying that friction varied as the square of the number of entities that participated in any event; one entity, one piece of friction; two entities, four pieces of friction, and that was his concern looking at two separate emergency systems both overlapping the same area, quite apart from the monetary issues, he believed it was a bad and dangerous approach to management. He said he thought there needed to be cooperation between the City of Lawton and the County; we have two professional law enforcement organizations who are accustomed to dealing with each other; there should be enough trust and assistance between the two to let a single system work for both. Sinnreich said subject to the earlier comments by the Council that we need to make sure it is economical from the point of view of the citizens, he thought from the point of view of safety, a single system is to be preferred.

Don Ray Ravis said he lives 30 miles west of here, northwest of Indiahoma, and he would try to talk and keep his cool, he had not been able to do that before when he got on this subject but he would try to tonight. He said he was getting sick and tired of two things, number one of hearing how much this will cost us, how much money we can save; and number two, the people that are determining his and his wife's lifeline live in town, they do not live 30 miles from here, they have all the ambulances and hospitals and everything available to them right then and there; they do not have to worry about their system going down and then getting to the hospital on time, but he did. Ravis asked what his life was worth and asked Turner to respond.

Ravis said the figures have been exaggerated, he had talked to the Sheriff and he had told him the figures he gave to the County Commissioners, which are not even close to what they are saying he gave them, he was skeptical on the money that is being spent already out of the 911 system and then turn around and say we do not have enough to do our own. He said there are a lot of things that really upset him over this and the main thing is, he listened to speeches and other speeches when the County Commissioners were doing their campaign election and every one of them came up with statements such as I'm going to listen to what you people in my district have to say and I'm going to vote accordingly. Ravis said Channel 7 had it on TV twice. Mayor Powell asked that personalities be kept out of it. Ravis said he was. Mayor Powell disagreed. Ravis said he was making a point of Channel 7 has had it on TV twice within the last year on call-in surveys and both times the majority of the people said no, we do not want to move, and that is not voting in their best interest. Ravis said Cache had a meeting a couple of weeks ago that Mr. Buchwald attended and almost unanimously Cache said no, we do not want it but it seems like we do not care what the public wants, it's what we want as politicians and that is not the way it should be.

Ravis said he had to thank the Council for what they did tonight; not a personality thing, fact; unlike the County Commissioners, the City advertised a meeting and welcomed people to come in and make a statement and council members do not even live on their votes. He said the Council's job does not make any difference on what the County voters have to say but the County Commissioners does, yet the City advertised a meeting to let people come in and say something, and he admired and respected that. Ravis said it boils down to the fact that the County residents, whose lives depend on 911, do not want it consolidated, if for no other reason than past history of the Lawton Police Department's station getting knocked off the air in a storm and the Sheriff's Department dispatching for them. He said less than two years later, the Sheriff's Department got knocked off the air and Lawton dispatched for them. Ravis said he was not willing to take the chance on his wife's health and his health that we consolidate it and it gets knocked off the air and he was stuck 30 miles from Lawton from the nearest hospital; he was definitely concerned and upset about this and was tired of hearing how much money this was going to save the taxpayers, he was one of the taxpayers and it was his money and he did not care if we save it or not, he wanted it left where it is at. Ravis said he was satisfied with what we have got, likes what the Sheriff's Department is doing, and did not want it moved.

Alisa Hoskins said she is a resident of Lawton in Heritage Hills and her family also owns and maintains a residence outside of Lawton in Comanche County. She said the Mayor mentioned this should be focused on the safety and cost issues and asked if one would take priority over the other. Mayor Powell said life always takes priority over money in his opinion. Hoskins said the whole reason she came this evening, she had no prior knowledge about the economics involved or the politics that have been involved in this; on the morning of Friday, November 2nd, her husband placed a 911 call, she had an emergency and she was unconscious and her husband was trying to keep her son away from her. When her husband placed the call, the dispatcher told him that it was necessary that he place the call himself to get an ambulance, that that was not their responsibility. Hoskins said it was a good thing that her husband took the call and that she did not because she did not think they could have played the tape back. She said in reference to what Purcell was saying about the City taking over the County and the City citizens to be taken care of in this manner; she teaches at a kindergarten class and this has worried her not only as a teacher but as a parent and the safety issue was her biggest concern; she was not here about the economics or to fight anyone's legislative battles but her first call was to the City Manager and when she did not hear back from him, she called and although she did not explain it she mentioned she was calling about a problem with the 911 system and she spoke with Mr. Turner and Mr. Stradley and Mr. Stradley was the one who was able to get her the information on where the call was taken and apparently it was through the City since they live in the City limits and it was the City who referred her husband to a private ambulance service. Hoskins said she felt they were let down tremendously.

Haywood asked how the City handles calls such as this involving ambulances. Wells said if a call is made to 911 and it is an emergency medical, we will dispatch first responders and the ambulance immediately. Haywood said maybe there was an error somewhere. Purcell said he wanted to say something about this because he had gotten involved and he thought the Council needed a briefing of what happened; it involves personnel, they have the tapes and Council can listen to them and needs to do that and we do not need to go over the whole thing tonight; it is a problem and we need to hear the tapes if we want to and it will show you what happened. Haywood asked if they were supposed to call the ambulance. Wells said yes and he could assure him that that is exactly what happens on every call.

Carrie Biggs, 41st and Camelot, said everyone is speaking about the budget and she did not understand how it would be cost effective for the County; she understood as a combined total City and County it would be but you are speaking about the budget and you are needing five dispatchers to go to the City to handle the case load for the calls, and you need five clerks to enter into the OLETS computer. Biggs said those clerks have to go through the OLETS system and be trained to enter it; they cannot just have someone currently working for the County to do that without going to the school, and she did not understand the cost effectiveness for that either if you are paying someone just to enter five or ten entries a day into the OLETS computer when as it is now the dispatchers are functioning as dispatcher and doing that as well. Biggs said she thought you would be adding a salary that is not necessary but you do have to have someone to man that and she did not understand where that budget would come from because if it is combined, the budget for 911 would go to the City or whoever is managing it was her understanding so the County would not be getting that funding plus having to come up with funding for an additional five persons which would put a burden on the County in her opinion if she was understanding correctly; they will not be given the funding plus having to come up with an additional salary and the County employees do not make that much and she did not know how they would come up with the extra income for that.

Biggs said officer safety and response time is against the County as it is and she is a dispatcher, has been dispatching for three years, does not dispatch for the City or County but used to work for the County and had visited the City dispatch and knew it went into a computer system and was prioritized and they have a really nice set up. She said she did not understand if a dispatcher took a call and it went into the system, would it be separated by County calls and City calls, and assumed it would be, but she also knows that the agency she works for when she dispatches or gives broadcasts to the City, it takes longer to get that out just because of the computer system it has to go through.

Biggs said she did not agree with the statement about it being an officer safety issue if it is not combined because as it is now the County and City are working separately and the County is handling 911 calls and there is no problem with it conflicting with the Lawton Police Department. She said this is just the enhanced 911 to better enable the County dispatchers to handle the calls, they will have the address. Biggs said when she worked at the County there had been several times when she would get a call and someone could not breath or they were having a heart attack and they were not able to give her the address and it took a substantially longer amount of time to get that information when she could have already had the EMS dispatched, and she did not think the County was unable to handle it because they have been handling it with substandard equipment as it is, and getting the better equipment would help.

Nolan Watson, Cache City Council Ward 4, said there has been very little coordination with the City of Cache, and he did not know about Elgin, Indiahoma, or Chattanooga, but Cache is in the reactive mode instead of the coordination or proactive mode; that is one of the problems. He said the other problem is there are many agreements that have to be signed; Cache receives tremendous service from the Sheriff's Department. Watson said one of his additional duties was police liaison for Cache, and they rely heavily on the Sheriff and the County patrols, as do the other smaller cities. He said the agreements they have now will have to be revisited with Lawton if it becomes part of the emergency service. Watson said he did not know about all of the communities, but Cache has a very good working relationship with the Comanche County Sheriff's Department; Cache has its own emergency services but Lawton needs to think long and hard about the agreements that are going to have to be made at the County level and at the City level.

John Mull, Sterling Chief of Police, said he resides in Sterling. He said some of the questions they have are both safety and money issues and that he was talking about the future of the small towns and the small town departments; the County does not just dispatch for the deputies; there are 33 separate agencies they dispatch for and in the County, his backup is not in the next zone like here in Lawton, his backup might be a trooper on Highway 7 or an officer in Elgin; the backup is usually 5 to 30 minutes away depending on the call, most of the time they are by themselves in the small towns. Mull said the dispatchers are able to help them out a lot on the safety aspect; they know there is a bad call and they can already get backup in route to them, and sometimes it might be a deputy coming from Geronimo but at least they know someone is coming.

Mull said the Sterling City Council and residents had talked about some problems; right now they are not charged for the 911 or dispatch service, other than the 911 coming out of their phone bill, but the dispatch service is free. He said they are on a very fixed budget; what happens in the next year when the price of this system goes up and they decide to start charging the small towns, they decide to start getting more money from the county, how much money are we talking about. Mull said some of the smaller communities in the larger counties are being charged anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000 per month, which would mean he would lose an officer and he only has seven officers now, so that is the money aspect to the public. He said they are worrying about the same type of crimes as they do in Lawton but they are doing it on a limited budget with limited manpower, and if they have to do a meth lab, it is Elgin, Fletcher, the County, and a couple of troopers, and everyone in the County works together, but right now everyone works together well and the safety is good, response times are great, 2-5 minutes usually in some of the small towns. He said they are also worried about the fire departments and how long away their backups will be; if someone's house is burning between Elgin and Sterling, who will they call out first and who will we get out there, what kind of system is going to prioritize that. Mull said the biggest issues he was worried about were officer safety, response time for backup, and the price it might cost the smaller towns in the future.

Margo Lubbers said she owns property in Lawton and in Medicine Park and resides in Elgin. She said on September 29 she was driving down Rogers Lane and someone threw something at her vehicle and it hit the top of her van; she immediately stopped at the Circle K and called 911 and waited an hour and no one showed; she called 911 again and was told that the City of Lawton did not have an officer they could send out. She said a week ago today she was in Elgin, her son's backpack was stolen, something that is not life threatening, no one is throwing objects at vehicles going down the road at night, and her chief of police was at her house within ten minutes saying he was ready to work on this crime and yet it was not even life threatening. Lubbers said she addressed the Lawton City Council in August about the Lawton Police Department and she cannot seem to get responses out of the Lawton Police Department and that was her first point, so living out in the county area, an area where she can get a response from her local police department and the Sheriff's office, she was real happy the way things are because Lawton sure has not done a whole lot for her. Mayor Powell asked that the comments pertain to safety and money issues and not personalities involved and Lubber could continue on those issues but we are not here to slam Mr. Wells and his staff or this City Council.

Don Stille said he lives by Pumpkin Center and he pays taxes in Lawton too every time he comes and buys something; he does not want his family to be triaged by someone in Lawton in an emergency. He said in an emergency the Sheriff would be at his house, or maybe the Under Sheriff or a Deputy, but he would get someone there and that was all he wanted, he wanted to be safe, he did not care about the money because he spends enough in Lawton, and all of them do, to make up the difference in that money and they do not get any services for what they pay in taxes in Lawton.

Charles Miller, Wichita Mountain Estates, said someone addressed how much the entire fund could be on the 911 system and by current state statute it can go up to a maximum of 15%. He said Mr. Grigg said there was no real true assessment of what the costs are and that was the most honest statement he had heard in the three years he has been living back in Lawton and listening to anything on the 911 system. Miller said Wells earlier said he would buy one console to bring in the County 911 system; very strange, we have a very effective 911 system working now with one console; speaking with Mr. Purcell he had told him there is a law that says we have to have two consoles and ten people. Miller said he had spent the last 48 hours trying to find the law and the only law he found was the law governing the grants from the Corporation Commission and nothing about the type of equipment. In 1988 when they signed the Emergency 911 Act which he had a copy of, they did have an advisory council, in later years it was disbanded because most of the systems were set up and gone. NENA, the national emergency numbering association, and APCO, which is the association of public communications and safety officers, in their guidance, and he has those books and read through them and it states if you have a population of so many people you should have so many people per console. When we move into an E911 system, which is just the addition of the addressing and the person's name to an existing 911 system, we are handling it effectively with one console, five dispatchers; where will we get the 30,000 other people that NENA and APCO recommend that you need to count two or three consoles for. We are not going to pick up any additional people within the next six months, or even six years, to require that cost; the costs that have been generated have been ones that stopped at figuring one console, it is adding the second console and five more people, where is the requirement? It is like buying a Volkswagen or Cadillac.

Purcell said Miller said he said there was a law and he wanted to correct that; he never told Miller there was a law and he and Miller talked for an hour and ten minutes. Purcell asked Wells to tell the group, based on the number of people in the county, under the guidelines, how many consoles are needed in the county, he never mentioned the law to Miller after an hour and ten minutes on the phone with him last Friday, and he wanted to get this straight. Wells said NENA and APCO recommend one position for every 20,000 people and under those guidelines it would say two people for the county.

Cindy Jackson, Comanche County Treasurer, said there has been a lot of talk about what has been collected and spent; that goes through her office and she would give an overview. The County has collected approximately $713,000 since December 1994. Expenses have been $247,000 to NetWork Design, InterAct, and Western Data, which is the addressing companies the County has done contracts with; we have spent $21,000 approximately on miscellaneous and that includes the pickup truck that was bought for the 911; that has left $46,000 in fees back to the telephone companies for the lines that are going to be in there or she was just told they were fees, and is where the money is and she wanted to let the people of Comanche County know that they have records of it and if anyone wanted to find out what exactly and how much is spent on what, they are welcome to come to her office and find out.

Gary Jones, Rt. 1, Cache, distributed a handout and said he wanted to address the issue of cost. He said we have gotten the figures from the Treasurer's Office, and the first figure is wrong because she came out with a new print out after that so you can adjust that figure down about $45,000, the starting figure is $444,000 and it should be rounded off to $400,000; there is a $100,000 grant that is available that has been applied for and approved for the purchase of equipment, which is the next figure. These numbers that are collected are up through September 30; you take the $713,000 that Mrs. Jackson mentioned, divide that by seven years, it is generating about $10,000 per month so what we are saying is from the time a decision is made to implement this, starting October 1 until March, there will be another additional $60,000 collected which makes available funds, take that $604,000 and make it $554,000.

Jones said he would be the first to admit that Mr. Wells knows what he is doing and his figures are good figures; the figure that we have got next of the initial start up cost is a figure that was provided by Mr. Buchwald in his presentation, it has to do with purchasing the telephone system, the complete E911 system with two consoles and the entire start up cost to be located at the County. You take that out and that makes available funds after the purchase of the equipment of approximately $450,000. The next item shows E911 fees; we are collecting about $10,000 per month right now, which is an annual figure of $120,000. Right now we have five people doing dispatching and with some costs associated with the telephone company, we are paying out $120,000 right now initially, or you take those two figures together, it is $240,000 in funding, that is no additional funding, that is what we've got plus the E911 funds that are coming in. Jones said the figure he had next was, we had held discussions about whether we need ten dispatchers or five and Wells mentioned the fact that they had 30,000 people, and you cannot half one-half of a dispatcher so what they had said was we can fund this and operate this, we are operating it now with five dispatchers; we can operate it with eight very efficiently with a 60% increase in personnel, that figure there, the only difference between that figure and what the Commissioners provided, because when the Commissioners asked Kenny Stradley to provide them a budget, they said provide us a budget with ten people; they did not say provide us a budget with however many people you need, so what we've said is that by having eight people, as opposed to ten because they are doing it with five now, by having eight people, this is what it comes up to be, and we'll admit there is a shortcoming of $37,831.20 each year, however, there is a fund sitting there with $450,000 that can be used for no other purpose than E911 in Comanche County. This is proposed and the figures that were provided by the Commissioners using no existing funds from anybody other than existing sources, not a single dollar in property tax from anybody, will self-fund this system for 12 years.

Jones said the next item is where he compared the E911 system contracted to the City of Lawton; take that $604,000 and adjust it down like we did on the other to $554,000; the initial start up cost of $86,754 for the City of Lawton is the figure that was provided by Mr. Wells to Mr. Buchwald, that leaves $468,000 available. The contract figure that was given by Mr. Buchwald to contract with the City was $126,000. The telephone charges, which are already included in the $277,000 figure above provided by Mr. Wells or $69,169. There is a figure next to that stating county control center employees, those are the five dispatchers and only about 20% of what those people do will be transferred to the City of Lawton; you heard your police chief say today that it is going to take five people to keep those records if they are transferred; if they are not transferred it is going to take five people at the county to do it; these are those five people; this is where our contention has been of the fact that it is not more cost effective to move it; it would be more cost effective to move those people and they can perform the function without additional people. You can't do that; those people are the life's blood of the Sheriff's Department, they provide warrants, they monitor the jail, they open and close the courthouse, they do all this other stuff, you cannot eliminate those people and your police chief said you cannot eliminate them, so you add that back in and it gives you a figure of $315,169. The annual revenue we have now is $240,000 which means we are operating at a deficit of $75,000; it costs $38,000 more to move the system than it does to keep it where it is at; we have a 911 system for the County and the only difference is we want to implement E911. If it made economical sense to move it, it is something you need to look at. Jones said the first thing is that the people do not want it moved, the people that have it are happy with it; it's not going to cost the City anything more. If it's moved, it's going to cost more. Why would you want to upset the people in the County, move it over here and cost more money? It makes no sense.

Hanna said back to the beginning of the meeting he asked the question about how long the County has been collecting money and Mr. Purcell made a statement that we did not really want it; his question was why was it not done five years ago and all he could hear from the audience is that the Council is being blamed. Jones said this entire problem is a County Commissioner problem and he was a County Commissioner in 1995; the addressing is not done. In 1995 they had open meetings, named the roads, began the addressing process and he has a minor in computer programming and worked at the telephone company and implemented 911 systems. Jones said the County Commissioner voted for him to start implementing the addressing in his district; two weeks later the other commissioners came back and said no, we are going to hire a contractor to do this, stop what you are doing; it was changed on a vote of two to one. A contract was entered into that was not competitively bid for $167,000 and that company filed bankruptcy and did not complete the contract. Another contract was let in March 1999 which says this process will be completed within six months or there would be a $100 per day penalty; that contract is still not completed, they have not only paid out all the contract, they paid additional and not one single penny has been charged to that company as a penalty; that's where we're at today.

Hanna said to the County people, we are not against you, but when you say "you" he takes it personally that the City Council is being blamed. Jones said no, and whenever the initial talks about consolidating E911, he was on there, he was the chairman of the jail task force, and what was being proposed at that time was consolidating a lot of services, such as record keeping, and now they find out that by not consolidating record keeping, we are both paying out the costs. Jones said we talked about consolidating the jail and that has not happened, but this would have worked if you were at one location, had one record keeping system and everybody was working together but you cannot take pieces and parts of this and separate it out and say let's do one part of it because you find out later that there are a whole lot more pieces to the puzzle than you ever imagined.

Shanklin asked if Jones stood behind his figures. Jones said they were not his figures, he only took their figures and put them down here for you to see, but yes, the figures look good to him. Shanklin asked if Jones had been invited to any of the meetings on the E911. Jones said no, and in fact when he was Commissioner he was told that he was not even to be involved in the addressing process, that the company from Arkansas that was doing the addressing would only deal with one Commissioner and they would not even talk to him, so no, he had not been involved. Shanklin said he thought Jones should attend the next meeting when they have one. Jones said he volunteered to help them at no charge and he would be glad to do that.

Bill Foster said he owns property in Lawton and lives near Meers on a farm and had worked under Commissioners Rowe, Jones and Buchwald in the Western District prior to his retirement, and he was fairly familiar with the road system in Comanche County and Buchwald asked if he would be willing to come back and do some road work if it would be required if the E911 system went into existence, and he told him and Turner that he would be. He said he had heard a lot about the costs for a new console and for combining the systems but he had heard nothing about what would have to be done out in the county. If you are going to implement an E911 system in the County, it is going to require that each and every one of these country roads be marked with a GPS marking for the address so people who are dispatched to the county, the ambulances, etc. can find that person's location but he had not heard a word said about that tonight nor anywhere else other than his personal conversations with the two commissioners.

Foster said we are talking about putting hundreds of poles on these county roads with little signs on them giving the location of that county road, such as 133 or 153 north, 246 south, and each road must be marked or the ambulance people will not be able to find where they are supposed to go. When you look at the number of poles and signs and the cost of putting them in, you are looking at $100,000 to $200,000 as an additional cost that no one has addressed and he thought the Council might need to be aware of the fact because if the City takes the system and it is all turned over to the City, the City may end up paying the price tag for those poles too.

Foster said he would like to address the safety issue and in the medical community there is a thing called the "golden hour" meaning if you dispatch an ambulance to an accident or life threatening emergency situation in the county, that patient needs to be at the hospital within a period of an hour to receive medical treatment if it is going to be really effective. He said when you look at Indiahoma, Chattanooga, Sterling or Medicine Park, you cannot dispatch an ambulance from Lawton, have it arrive, secure the patient and return to Lawton within that hour period. Foster said there have been several emergencies where he lives and they do not worry about the ambulance because he can put a person in the car and get them to a hospital in 30 or 45 minutes, where if he had to wait for an ambulance to come to his house and then return to Lawton, it would be an hour and twenty minutes or thirty minutes; it is just not safe. If you live in the country, you put a person in the car and you take them to town if they have a medical emergency.

Foster said another concern is it does not make sense to him to remove a communications system or adopt another one when we already have a fine working system that is underground and protected from storms and tornadoes and move it into a place which has no such protection. He said it seems that two systems are better than one so we can have one back up the other, and this has worked effectively; if we would not have had the two systems, we would have been totally without communications in several storms.

Arnold Owens, Edgewater Park, said he was a first responder and volunteer firefighter at Edgewater Park and the county dispatches them to fires and emergencies; they know where to go and his people know where to go but most of all, 911 is for one reason, to protect the people of the City and of Comanche County. He said regardless of the cost, the people voted for it, the County Commissioners have got it and let's put it in the system; we need two systems. What happens in this day and age with what has been going on in the last 90 days in America, where we are at today, national disasters, civil defense, if one system gets knocked out, what happens, if we have a natural disaster, can one system handle 3,000 telephone calls, can two, no; can two do it better than one, yes. Owens asked that two systems be maintained, regardless of the cost, and if there is anyone in the audience or on the Council that can tell him what his wife's life is worth, tell him.

Kenny Stradley, Comanche County Sheriff, thanked the Mayor and Mr. Devine for putting this on and giving people a chance to talk, and he felt Mr. Turner did a good job, no pun intended, and he was not here to push anything on anybody. He said he thought the best things were those said by the last few people and that was his main concern; his main concern is if we knock one out and we only have one, how are the people in Lawton, the people in the rural areas and the small towns going to get any help. Stradley said he represents people in Lawton, in the rural areas and in the small towns and there is no one any more important than those people as far as he was concerned, the job we have to do, and the Council too and they sort of got to be the whipping child really and sort of got in the middle of this deal and he apologized and did not mean for the City to get into it. Stradley said he wanted us to run our own system where it can be a back up and that he and Wells had worked in the past, helped each other and they had a good relationship going; we need this system, these people need this system; these people come to Lawton and spend taxes, they are worth something, they come to your town and spend taxes, they believe in your making an honest and good decision. Stradley said if we only have one system, what will we do; we have two right now and they work good; the money issue has been up and down and up and down. He said he did not want anyone to have to pay any more taxes, that is not good, but you cannot have taxes without the people voting for it and people will not vote for any more taxes, they do not want any more taxes. Stradley said the main thing is it is the Council's responsibility to take care of the people in the City limits of Lawton and it is his responsibility to the City of Lawton, as well as the rural areas and small towns. He said if Lawton has problems, the rural volunteer firefighters would respond to Lawton and help and they had worked together good in the past.

David Carter said he spoke last Tuesday and the information he received at that meeting had not changed and he was with the editorial in today's paper and he really did not understand, the information he had was that this was a no-brainer. The City has no responsibility from the standpoint of the cost, that is what he understands, and if it is consolidated, the full cost is borne by the county, so there is no cost to the city other than the space available wherever the E911 is located. Carter said if you consolidate, what do you assume, giving space and of course supervision by Mr. Turner. If we believe on the other side if you don't and there is going to be a cost and apparently last week the Sheriff said $50,000, and the paper refers to $20,000, Mr. Buchwald last week referred to $95,000, and the Excise Board man said there is not any more money in the County, we have allocated it; Mr. Jones said there is all kinds of money, so the only question is if you do not consolidate, do your constituents, who are members of the county, assume a bill for the people outside the county; we already have a system, that system is consolidated with Fort Sill and there is no concern apparently on the part of Fort Sill about the system being knocked out so there is not adequate service, or what have you. Carter said there have been accolades to the current system the City has; if there are two systems and there is a cost overrun, being elected officials and having to address fiscal concerns, where is that money going to come from. If we do not raise our taxes, does something else go out, or does this duplicitous system go down the drain because it cannot be funded because people will not raise the money. Carter said the elected officials for the County have looked at this and they felt it was in the best interest of their constituents to come to the City and say let us consolidate on a cost basis. He said he did not understand what was happening here today; the Council's constituents are the City of Lawton residents and they are asked to go into a system that once again does not cost you anything because they will bear the full increase of cost regardless. Carter said the Mayor had expressed some concern over liability and from his standpoint, that could be easily covered in the contract that there is a hold harmless clause or the county will cover any and all costs on any liability on anyone outside the city limits, so that could easily be covered if that is a concern.

Carter said it appeared to be a no-brainer, it does not cost you anything and if you do not do it, you may cost your constituents a tax bill; that's the choice. He said as a member of the City of Lawton and a part of that constituency, he would ask that the system be consolidated on the recommendation of the various people who were elected to represent the County people who looked at their budget, regardless of what Mr. Jones said, they purportedly had those figures and they looked at them, and in their collective representation, they decided that was the best way to go and he would respectfully ask the Council to consolidate in the best interest of all the people of Comanche County.

Mayor Powell said he thought he heard Mr. Carter say there was not any money over there and the County Treasurer just got through saying they had $713,000 and spent $247,000, plus $21,000 and there is a balance. Carter said he was sure the County Commissioners would handle that and they are his representatives there and he would expect them to take that into consideration; he did not know what money was there, he was relying on the people he elected to represent him both in the City as well as in the County and he was present only as a concerned citizen with what limited information he had garnered from the last meeting and this meeting and he was still of the mind that it was in his best interest to consolidate with all the information he has been supplied with.

Roy Bailey, Rt. 1, Box 183, Cache, said part of the signs have been put up, but he had attended several County Commissioner meetings where they said it would take 6-9 months to order the signs, but the signs will not stay up once they are put up because people tear them down; mail boxes and street signs get torn up and never replaced. He said he thought it was safer for two systems than it was for one, and he had heard about the costs but the figures did not correspond with what was given out. He said he had attended every Commission meeting in the last three years except for two, and none of their money talks, it is always different, one has one figure and another had another figure and they should jive but they don't.

"Purcell: I just have a few comments that I want to make. Again, I'm going to go back to what I said at the beginning, we didn't particularly want it. The way I look at it, the three county commissioners, you elected them, they represent the entire county. I am not going to sit up here and say I'm going to overrule what they want done, if you can't convince them, you can't convince me. But what I want to say is last week when we were talking, I was told there were three counties that had combined E911 systems. I don't remember who said it but Sheriff, do you recall, I don't remember who it was, so I spent four hours this week on my own calling those three counties. I talked to the Chief Deputy Sheriff in Tulsa County, the supervisor of the E911 system in Tulsa County; the Chief Supervisor of the E911 system in Lattimer County, I never did get a hold of Sheriff Holly in Lattimer, he never returned my calls. In Greer County I talked to the 911 supervisor. I talked to the Sheriff, Bill Runyon, in that county, and I talked to the Chief of Police. And across the board, I'm not going to spend a lot of time, every one of them to the man said their consolidated county system is working fine and there are no problems; one of them even sent me, and I think the Sheriff got a copy of the contract with Tulsa County and Chief Deputy Jim Helm is a good friend of the Sheriff he told me but he said it's working fine.

I asked a couple of questions in all these things, I said, number one, are the citizens treated in the county as second class citizens and you don't answer their phone calls and get there as quick as you do city, and in Tulsa they've got a unique situation, the Sheriff last week he talked about you wanted every call answered, well in Tulsa County, if the call comes in from the City of Tulsa, it's prioritized just like we do in the City of Lawton, but if the call comes in from the county, every single call is answered because that's the way the Sheriff of Tulsa County wants it, and I said well how does that work, it works fine, there are no problems. I said it is in the agreement, no, we just told them what we wanted to do and they do it. There's no problem.

I further found out in this four hours of discussion that it isn't only three counties, there are eleven other counties that are combined that I know about, so somehow in the State of Oklahoma only, not to mention other states, at least 14 counties are combined and it's working so I'm still, I hear the concerns that you all are expressing, but some of the concerns have nothing to do with dispatch, some of them do but some do not. I heard concerns that we're going to charge and I don't know where that rumor came from. I heard that we're going to dispatch an ambulance from Lawton and it's going to go out, no, the ambulance that you dispatch from the Sheriff's Department will be the same place you get the ambulance if it's dispatched in the City, so there's a lot of concerns out there that don't make a lot of sense to me, but my bottom line is, you all need to convince the three county commissioners that they don't want to combine. If you can't do that, I'm going to rely on what they want and that's the way I feel about it and I'll say it here, I told some people on the phone the same thing and that's what I wanted to say. I'll say it for the record.

Shanklin: ...we haven't had the right people in on the talk to begin with. I think there have been some people that have not been present whenever some of these figures were bandied about. I don't know. It doesn't make any difference to me. I just don't want it to cost Ward 5 any money to subsidize a county E911. Now Mr. Jones back there said we've got the money 12 years, lots of things can happen in 12 years and I understand that you all want your service and that doesn't bother me. If I lived out there I probably would too, but I hate to pit the rural Comanche countians against the City of Lawton because we are in the county, we are the county, we out number you two or three to one.

Purcell: Yeah, but let me tell you when they do that, I checked today with the head of Southwest Bell here, you cannot do that, because I was going to ask tonight, if it costs you three times as much, would you be willing to do it. I'm not talking about... will you please sit down, sir. I talked to the head of the Southwestern Bell here today and yes, we can go up, but the problem is, the whole county goes up, they can't go to 15% and the City stay at 5, that is not permitted under whatever they have, so they could go to 15 or whatever the gentlemen says, but then everyone in the City's going to be paying 15% too.

Devine: When I asked to have a forum, but there's a couple of issues I'd like to bring up that we keep going back to figures. Lord knows who you're going to trust; whose numbers are you going to trust; who are you going to get to represent and to give you the right figures? There's not two people in here that can agree on any set of numbers. It doesn't make any difference if the County Commissioners did it or it doesn't make any difference if the City of Lawton does it, somebody's going to dispute them. It goes back to the original issue of which is the best for the people. To me I've kept kind of a record of what's went on and I feel like the people in the county has expressed theirselves very clearly that they'd like to keep it where it's at. The Sheriff says that he can run and operate the business with the money that they have. I think the Council basically ought to bow out of it. We can vote one way or the other. Those people out there has got their choice come next election time to re-elect the county commissioners or get them new ones. In my opinion I think we just need to step back and let them handle their problem that they've got, everybody said it's not going to cost anybody any more, Mr. Jones come up with a pretty good set of figures, I've looked them over, I feel as comfortable with them as anybody else's has. I can say some negative things about our E911 system, it's definitely not perfect. I've got some written statements that was turned in to our City Manager and it never been acted on, but again, I'm not going to get into that. I cannot support combining the 911 system."

Mayor: Yeah, without getting Doug involved in this, let me tell you exactly, and I'm going to say it's Charlie Maguire is who I talked to, and Mr. Maguire told me that right now the mils are 10.23, is that correct? Okay. But round it down to 10 mils, those cannot be increased without a vote of the people, is that correct? With the exception of one thing, if a judgment happens to come along, then that could go on there without a vote of anybody, but this right here, and I asked specifically this question because I've heard it come up many, many times, that if there is an increase, well, it'll go on our citizens ad valorem taxes and everything and I asked that question and I was assured by Mr. Maguire that that could not happen and when I made that statement a while ago, I asked if there was anyone in the audience that would refute that statement and nobody said one thing so that's where I got my information from.

Haywood said he had worked all over the county and although those residents did not vote for him, he cared about them, especially senior citizens who have paved the way for them. He said when you beat down on Turner, that is his Commissioner and he is one of his constituents and Ward 7 residents care about Commissioner Turner and they would protect him all they could. Haywood said if the County did not want Lawton to help them out, he would vote in their favor but we wanted the best thing for this county. He said he was quite sure the door would still be open if they needed to come back to us later on.