Cell phone surcharges discussed Monday

    The Washington County E911 Board discussed telephone surcharges at its meeting Monday night. The entirety of the E911 Board?s budget comes from telephone surcharges, which for landline is $1.50. The board voted to support the continuation of the $1.50 surcharge at its June meeting, which must be approved by voters this November. If it is not approved, it will drop to $1.

    The board also receives money from cellular telephone surcharges, but much less. Cell phone users pay 65 cents per month to 911 services ? less than half the surcharge of landline users. Part of that money goes to the state government, and the rest is divided among the counties to the counties according to call volume and service area.

    Communications Supervisor Cara Sorrells said there is a movement afoot to increase the amount of money counties receive from the cell phone surcharge. She attended the statewide E911 council in Urbandale Tuesday, where there was much discussion about how to tackle the issue of cell phone charges. Sorrells said the number of landlines has been going down for several years, and the money from additional cell phones is not making up the difference. She was in a meeting Tuesday for two hours and the group did not reach a consensus on how to solve the problem.

    ?There is not an easy answer out there,? she said. ?Should we make the cell phone providers pay more? Should we make the users pay more??

    Sorrells said that at the end of the meeting, a committee formed to come up with a plan to get more money to 911 services.

    The money from telephone surcharges can pay for equipment, phone lines and anything associated with the delivery of a 911 call. It cannot pay for the dispatch building itself, nor can it pay for personnel expenses such as insurance or uniforms.

    Sorrells said it?s hard to predict what the future of emergency communications will be. She said Black Hawk County became the first county in the state to accept text messages sent to 911. She said other states could soon follow suit. 

    ?In the future, we could be sending videos and pictures to the dispatchers,? said Sorrells.

    Washington County Sheriff Jerry Dunbar said the cell phone surcharges deserve further discussion.

For hte full story, see the Aug. 25 edition of The Washington Evening Journal