THE GUARDIAN has mulled the billings presented to cities in Canyon County for dispatch services and has come to the conclusion Nampa is greedy. Nampa is duplicating a service for first responders already provided by the County Sheriff. It is time to have some consideration for citizens and taxpayers footing the bill for this necessary service
In the late 1990's Caldwell combined dispatch services as well as their records with the Canyon County Sheriff. Caldwell Chief of Police Bob Sobba and then Sheriff George Nourse worked out the details of this and saved Caldwell and County taxpayers a bundle of cash. Nampa has been approached numerous times about combining dispatch services by the current and past CCSO people to no avail.
It is all about money, greed and a very self serving attitude by Nampa City and Police officials. We disagree with the notion it is time for all cities other than Nampa to pony up for first responder dispatch services. It is time to take a look at the cost and benefits of a combined dispatch center for all county residents. Tight budgets and scarce tax dollars should make this a priority for all concerned.
Each phone line into homes as well as each cell phone has a 911 assessment charge against their phone bill each month. This is a huge amount of money pouring into the entity in charge of 911 dispatch services. Nampa is not about to let this revenue stream go even when it is in the best interests of the taxpayers.
Canyon County has less than 200,000 people and it makes sense to consolidate dispatch services under the County Sheriff. Dispatchers in a consolidated dispatch know where every first responder is at all times. If time is of the essence then how does Nampa justify not combining dispatch services. The closest responder may not be a Nampa copper, paramedic or other vital service.
The local paper published an oped piece on the Sheriff sending bills to each city for dispatch services, endorsing this nonsense. We think this is just wrong. Dispatching of first responders is a service that should be budgeted for via county taxes.
More than half the county population lives within the city limits of Nampa. Double billing Nampa via city and county taxes for dispatch services is not a fair deal for Nampa residents and taxpayers. The real solution here is to combine Nampa dispatch services under the Canyon County Sheriff and save all taxpayers a a lot of money and cease all this duplication of effort with two dispatch centers.
We as citizens need to be paying attention to how our tax dollars get spent. The new Nampa Police Station offers a perfect opportunity to consolidate dispatch services in the county and save us all some money. Greed and a self serving approach to this by Nampa elected and appointed officials should be of concern to all residents of our county.
The great state of Nampa will continue to be a non-partner in any savings to taxpayers. Tom Dale and his city council could care less about saving money.
ReplyDeleteThe dispatch cost savings is a drop in the bucket compared to all the cash they want to blow on an unproven concept to convert trash to electricity.
Gosh! I seem to remember one of the old Mel Gibson post Apocalypse movies of the Road Warrior and some little guy was underground making pig feces into "Energy". Maybe Tom and the crew saw this same movie.
Why stop with dispatch services? Why not the whole kit n caboodle? Why does the great state of Nampa need it's own force? To generate more ticket revenue?
ReplyDeleteCombine all of it into one police force. Make the city's stop taxing us for police and make that taxed at the county level. I can tell you I would rather pay the same number of sheriff's to patrol Nampa instead of city policemen considering the enormous wage gap between the county mounties and the Nampa Police force. Takes care of that bothersome union too that only Nampa has. Explains the wage disparity.
Of course this can only work if our truly gifted commissioners can ever figure out that no matter how much they keep lowering taxes and blaming the cities, we are not stupid. We are not re electing you. You have mismanaged things enough.
A smart commission would have made reasonable cuts and continued providing the services they were supposed to and not try to bribe us all by over cutting and then trying to bill the cities.
Why not a city manager / county manager form of government?
Why not a unified metropolitan police department?
Lets oust them all and be done with it!
There is a nice big empty building on the corner of Madison and Cherry here in Nampa that the county could use to combine dispatch, let's put some of Tommy D's empty buildings to good use.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me if you drive around Nampa we have a large supply of empty buildings. Lets see we have Lloyd lumber and a number of buildings downtown , The Zilog building ,the building on the cornor of Madison and cherry, the building behind K-mart on Nampa Caldwell Blvd. a number of buildings in the Treasure Valley and Gateway centers, and lets not forget the 3 soon to be empty and torn down city buildings now occupied by the police, fire and central sevices. I'm sure I missed some but what does it matter when you have a unlimited source of funds like "The City" has.
ReplyDeleteLets also not forget our former city councilman Bob Schmidt who made this all possible when he changed his vote on the urban renewall district. I see were he has gotten himself in a bit of a pickle with the state insurance board. I guess ones true character finally comes through. Funny how this hasn't been published in our local so alled newspaper
ReplyDeleteI am pausing for a moment of remembrance and reflection. It was nine years ago this week that Chief Creech and Mark Hupe were killed in that tragic plane crash. Let's remember these two good men.
ReplyDeleteI see in paper today Ada County wants to combine dispatch services with Canyon County. This just serves to point out the waste in this service and the genuine opportunity to save us all money if the egos involved will get off the dime. Taxpayers should be outraged at all this waste.
ReplyDeleteIt seems logical and prudent to do a combined dispatch service for the two counties. Is anyone in Nampa listening?
Will combining 5 or 6 expensive government agencies, result in a streamlined well run entity that saves taxpayers money, or one giant governmental nightmare that eats the taxpayer for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
ReplyDeleteIf you get rid of administrative overhead and keep the workers in a combined agency, logic says money will be saved. If, however, you put all these agencies under one roof with all their admin crews intact then nothing will be saved.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a big city with more residents than the State of Idaho and moving up here seeing all the separate entities for just about everything bothered me. The answer I got was "local control" to all this waste and spend of taxpayer dollars. My question back is just how much local control can we afford and what is the cost benefit. I still haven't received a good answer.
I did not know Mark Hupe or Alan Creech well but I did come in contact with them both over the years. They seemed to be honerable men. Something we have far too few of today
ReplyDeleteSorta having a writers block right now, because I have taken a stroll down memory lane.
ReplyDeleteI remember back in Fall of 2001, when Tommy D was elected Mayor. Instead of accepting his role as a humble servant for the people; if you remember the tape; he was running around, jumping up and down, screaming, and just plain acting like a spoiled boy with a new toy. On and on and on his tenure as Mayor of Nampa goes.
It is time to combine centers now. I think the current bill to the cities is just the cost of the dispatchers salaries. Additionally each center, Ada, Nampa and Canyon have invested millions on their current buildings, phone and radio equipment, support and administation staffs. If nampa and canyon were to combine, you split all these cost two ways. If nampa and canyon combine with Ada, you split all these costs three ways and save all us taxpayers millions in savings. Ada and nampa are wanting to build new centers this year. So instead of having three new centers, why not build one big center for the whole valley and save all of us some big bucks!
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me there is an endless amount of upgrading of 911 dispatch services. Millions and millions have been spent and just when to we hit an end point in all of this.. I don't know the reality of the 911 fees collected from phone lines and cell phones but this has to be an enormous amount of money and where is the accounting for all of this money?
ReplyDeleteMy feeling is 911 funds collected are nothing more than a "toy of the month" fund for agencies to never find an end point for spending money.
There are plenty of empty buildings around here to combine dispatch, but it is a logger head task to get Nampa to give up its easy money.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of empty buildings, what is the deal with this new empty building on 12th Ave in Nampa; the burger joint. Didn't the guy who ran that place run for mayor of Nampa in 2009? Where did he go? What happened?
I really like the option offer by Ada Commissioner Sharon Ullman to combine dispatch services into one dispatch center. We now have so many navigation tools today we didn't have just a few years ago like GPS on vehicles. This shows the exact location of all police, fire and EMS personnel real time.
ReplyDeleteThey don't need a new building. The county dispatch center already has the extra room and equipment in place for Nampa to move in right along side them. They also use the same computer systems now too. The place was built that way on purpose because they were looking ahead.
ReplyDeleteWhat Nampa is doing is a slap in the face to the taxpayer. The whole county is working together with one plan in mind and Tommy Boy and his pack of planners is still trying to do their own thing costs be damned! Get on board Tommy boy! You need a new dispatch center and cop shop about as much as we need a hole in the head!
I saw an article in the paper where there is a audio recording with all the Caldwell big wigs including Garrett talking about the 911 funding fiasco.
ReplyDeleteThey make some pretty good points about taxation by the county for services they don't use because the city decided to start providing those services. Now that argument might hold some water if they can answer one simple question for me.
Why are you wasting my tax dollars to provide services the county is already providing and is obligated to provide? The city is not obligated to, so why do we have one?
It's high time we abolished wasteful private city police forces hell bent on writing revenue generating tickets for the city and went back to having constitutionally elected law enforcement answerable to the people.