From the Northwest Indiana Times:
The Lake County Council is planning a June 26 public hearing on whether to ask voters this fall for permission to borrow $13 million to finance consolidation of the county's 18 E-911 call centers.
The council will meet Tuesday to take formal action on whether to sponsor a referendum to approve the loan that would appear on the Nov. 6 general election ballot.
County Attorney John Dull said in a memo, made public Thursday, the public's permission is required because the taxes to repay the loan would be outside the state's tax cap limit.
Lake officials have until Dec. 31, 2014, to transform the current community-based E-911 system, which now handles more than 450,000 calls for police and fire assistance into a unified dispatch system.
A commission of police and fire officials favors remodeling existing municipal buildings in East Chicago and Hobart into duplicate unified call centers. The total cost in equipment and renovations could exceed $40 million, Larry Blanchard, an administrative assistant for county commissioners told the council Thursday.
Council members debated whether those proposals are affordable and said elected county officials need to take over the E-911 consolidation task now to ensure it is fiscally sound.
Council President Jerome Prince, D-Gary, said the alternatives to a one-time bond issue repaid with higher property taxes over a lengthy period could be a county income tax, which local officials dread as too unpopular. Lake is the only county in the state without a local personal income tax.
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/council-may-ask-voters-for-million-to-start-e-/article_ba172ca0-8641-599a-96d7-6d141e9ccfcc.html
