Remarks by Stan Batemon
232 remarks on the record, newest first · Page 7 of 10
Anybody want to practice anything they want to say between now and the time John gets us plugged in? Katrina, I didn't see you. I'm glad to see you here today. Are you going to get here on Bateman time, which is like the last second? I know. Well, I didn't see you when I came through.
Y'all mix and mingle and everybody just get acquainted. We're all in this together.
And you did say Michelle's on her way over too.
Don't bear with us. We're getting there. Any of y'all ever have any problem with your technology at your meetings or anything? Have you ever had to start over and redo one? We had to back up one time learning how to get all this done in today's modern world. Pretty simple when we were filming it on the cell phone.
Coffee right in there. I'm happy. I drank some energy drink this morning. I bet you do it anyways.
Okay, there's a copy of the agenda on the screen, so we're ready to go then. Before we get started with our meeting, if you'll bow with me, I'll ask God to watch over us as we go through this meeting today. Dear God, we just come before you again, dear Lord, humble and filled with joy, dear Lord, that you're our God and that you give us grace. God, we thank you for the positions you've put us in. We know their importance as you've listed it in your word, and we ask you to guide our steps today. do things that are only there to lift you up, then those are the things that'll be right, no matter…
Not quoted here: it may name a member of the public. Hear it at the meeting.
Properly moved and second. You had a chance to look those over. Are there any changes to those minutes at this time? Any additions, deletions? If not, all in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed, no. Motion carries to pass those minutes approval.
In our agenda, we have a report section where we make sure we leave a spot open for other people that are here with different issues and that we need to take up that we might not have handled during our work session. So within the report section, we've got all the commissioners and the county attorney County Administrator. And today we have several of the mayors here want to discuss some relationships between the county and the mayors and how we handle our funding with our citizens in the cities. The first item on that to speak for the mayors, I think I've got down Mayor Rusty Jessup. And if…
Yes sir yeah any of you that want to make sure it's about the way this is affecting your budget or whatever what you want to say also let me ask staff do they have this yes sir okay well let's let's copy this and give it to them once we put it in here it's our public record anyway can we get some copies of this to hand out yes sir yeah sure what is that what we have here I told you about oh yeah this is it says see the numbers below and this has to do with operation fund dash dispatch And while we're making those copies, let me back up a little bit. And then, of course, if anybody wants to…
Wait a minute. Let's talk about $40. $40, yeah. So we really did start off way low because the county was committed. And we paid the majority of it back then. And we did adjust it some and got reasonable. It wasn't $50. All of the municipalities pitched in what they felt like they could afford. Some municipalities were in better fiscal sector. Now, We have never in the 31 years adjusted this properly. And we may not do it this time, but we are at least having a discussion. What does centralized dispatch cost us, and what's it worth? What's it worth to you? What's it worth to us? Centralized…
No. The cost of the program entirely is some more figures that Freddie has, and it's closer to $3.9 million, $3.8 million. whatever it is.
When you take into consideration heating and cooling the building, adding on, upgrading the desks, a lot of those kind of things, that may not be reflected in this. Furnishing the operation itself, furnishing the the facility which has got to be pretty expensive in itself 3 382 is how much needs to be divided or how much we that's what we've come up with here Freddie's like I say the figures he and Matt have been working on those in the The total figure, we'll let them share with y'all also. At some point, we'll get them. And then any differences in those, y'all call them and get them to…
Call the mayor's phone. Any of y'all ever have that? Any of y'all ever get a phone call yourself and say, Chief, can you run down to Soil and Soil's house and check on Soil and Soil? They're gone. I know you do. But call volume, if we really use call volume, ought to give us a pretty good reason, I mean a pretty good figure, set of figures of what you're, investment in this should be the volume of what's the what's the ambulance calls here's something else the big thing that I remember is doing is call volume we've always said we'll dispatch and start out volunteer fire departments afraid of…
Well, we chose, we're the entity that collects the two-mill tax, and we distribute it. We know what another part of the loss is. We distribute it in another crazy method, equally. You all get an equal share, which y'all probably hadn't had a problem with that because you did share the million dollars the county gave you for other operations equally. Y'all good with that because you work together so well. Well, that's the way that this... This money from the two mil taxis has nothing to do with what your taxes are made in your city if we didn't I mean pale city moody Springville the bigger…
I think it moved around depending on the municipality because we kind of tried to take the way the contract says based on call volume. Is there a contract? Pardon?
Yes. Your city's got it. Your city signed a contract for a centralized dispatch. I think.
Just because I'm not coming back, you didn't even call me and talk to me about this.
Here we have another mayor that wanted to speak. I like this. As y'all know, I like that. That gets us together on these things, just like when we really have been in the mix of subdivision regulations. We really didn't get a lot of input from the developers that were really interested in it until we said, okay, we're ready to pass them. And then the room filled up next time, which is what's going on here. But sometimes that's just the way it works. That's just the nature of the business. I think it would have been better for you to know that If our budget looked like it was going to be…
And let me just point this out. That meeting that was held yesterday is not the first meeting we've had on this. We actually met with the people that we said go audit our fuel tax two years ago. So this was a meeting with the people we said go audit our fuel tax two years ago. And they were having difficulty auditing it for some reason. It's been going down for that long. So for this reason, does that mean we need to fire the people that's doing our audit now and hire somebody new? Because this audit's not satisfactory to us. That's what the meeting yesterday was about. So we need to see, do…
Yes, and that's a good point to make. That fee is probably a fourth of what we said it was going to be.
It's not generating anywhere near what we said it's going to generate. So that was a figure factored in to make us feel better about ourselves being able to pay the bill on the jail. It has not produced the money. There again, do we need to audit that figure too? I don't know. But the fees, what was that one? The fee on every case in court? Yeah. $2? It was minimal. It has not produced the money to factor in. The cost of the operation of the jail is what surprised all of us. You'd think you'd put in a new jail with new heating and cooling and new way of operating it with one jail. And we're…
That's the point where we are now. We used to basically do our own in-house budgeting as we got to it. The parts that we're sharing, we'll continue to to share more of it or take on more of it. But I think you need to know about what's the part we're doing. Let me touch on 9-1-1. And first of all, let me just point out that Aslyn does an excellent job with our 9-1-1. She's well known all over the state as a person that's very efficient and knows what 9-1-1 is. Few years ago got a little more complicated the state passed a law and created the state 9-1-1 board and so the money that used to be…
30%. They're about 30%. I thought the cost coming in central was everybody in there said, 911, what's your emergency? No. One out of three is that. So we can't pay for central dispatch any more out of 911 than we are. Because we're not really paying for dispatch. We're paying for call takers. It's a totally different term. It has different legal responsibilities. That's why this board has to pay attention to it from a different standpoint. Call takers in most counties answer the phone. 911, what is your emergency, or whatever they're supposed to say. There's a rule even that says, what are…
How is that going to, will that offset? No, we'll have to hire four more dispatchers. And there's some discussion there, and I don't agree with that. There's even differences up here. We're going to cost us money. Let me point out, I've been in several meetings with the Blount County 911 who dispatches leads. Make sure everybody knows that. Blount County 9-1-1 Communications District dispatches leads. They dispatch leads. They figured out the number. Their dispatchers and how many it takes. Right now, they're dispatching leads with two, the equivalency of two dispatchers. Well, how can they…