From the Northwest Indiana Times:
A consolidated E-911 system won't be a toll free call for Lake County taxpayers.
Lake County residents may have to contribute millions of additional dollars to create a single countywide system next year that would replace the current 17 community-based police and fire radio communications systems.
That may sound like a prank call to anyone who remembers state officials promising it would streamline costs to the public. State officials mandated the change.
That was the reaction in March of municipal police and fire chiefs at an advisory E-911 commission meeting when Lake County Sheriff John Buncich and his attorney, John Bushemi, read from a document -- never meant to be made public -- laying out for the first time what it might cost city and town residents, workers and property owners.
They said cities and towns would have to surrender $3.5 million in property taxes that go to their own community-based police and fire dispatchers, as well as an additional $2.3 million of their share of a local income tax the Lake County Council is preparing to enact next month.
Those amounts, combined with $2.6 million in telephone user fees collected by the state, would round out a projected first-year budget of $8.4 million for a consolidated system.
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See the full article here:
http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/pooling-e--services-likely-to-soak-taxpayers/article_d061e4f3-650f-56b0-ae6f-362c5021fd76.html
