By Sam Parsons
The Mahaska County Board of Supervisors met this morning and had a discussion with Oskaloosa City Councilwoman Ronda Almond about 911 issues within the county. The discussion came about following an incident last week during a council meeting in the city of Pella, where the Pella city council was set to consider an agreement to provide police and fire dispatch services for the city of Oskaloosa, and the Oskaloosa city council said they had no knowledge of the agreement.
Almond said that one of the issues with contracting out dispatch services is the potential change in response time, adding that while the city has no issue with contracting out for other services such as utilities, 911 services involve peoples’ lives, and she said that there was too much at stake.
“We are going to figure this out,” Almond said. “It’s a need for this community. And at the end of the day, if the answer is to change something, at least everybody is on board and everyone knows about it.”
Board chair Mark Groenendyk said that the entire ordeal with county 911 services for Mahaska County comes down to the fact that nobody wants to pay for them.
“Everyone wants to shove it on EMA…if EMA takes it over, the city and the county will no longer budget for these items, and it’ll be assessed to the taxpayer directly. No accountability. That’s what this is all about…nobody wants to be accountable. We just want to shove it on someone else, put it on a board that nobody knows when they meet, how they meet, and who’s accountable for what…as I have heard many times, the mayors will vote to put it on EMA, because it’s on the county levy, so who cares? ‘It’s not us raising your taxes, it’s the county, it’s on their levy.’ There is no accountability in EMA.”
“How many lawsuits did we have? The sheriff and every mayor voted to sue their own county and lost every time,” Groenendyk continued, “and we’re back to the same discussion.”
Groenendyk also added that the board agreed that a potential 28E agreement between the city and the county for these services would not be the solution based on court rulings.
Both Groenendyk and board vice chair Steve Wanders agreed to attend any meetings with the city of Oskaloosa and other cities to hash out the issue, provided the meetings wouldn’t have the end goal of putting 911 costs on the county levy. No official action was taken on the matter.
The next regular meeting for the Mahaska County Board of Supervisors is scheduled for December 2.
