The Lewis County 911 Communications division, which serves as the primary answering point for all 911 calls placed in Lewis County, is working to separate itself from the county and establish independent governance.
The division’s combined user committee, which is made up of representatives from local law enforcement and fire agencies, voted last week to move forward with a change in governance.
The 911 Communications Division is currently considered a Lewis County department, meaning it is overseen by the Lewis County Board of Commissioners.
“There's support both on the county side and … from all the user agencies to make this move,” 911 Director Jennifer Libby-Jones said.
Establishing governance independent from the county has been a topic of discussion among user agencies since before Libby-Jones came on as 911 director in July 2022, she said.
“I think this is a really good move,” Libby-Jones said during a quarterly meeting of the Lewis County Fire Commissioners Association in Onalaska on Monday. “The benefits of this and doing it now is we can move forward without those trust issues with the county because we’ll be running the organization ourselves.”
The user committee will most likely pursue an interlocal agreement (ILA) for the independent 911 communications division, Libby-Jones explained.
“What that will allow is for each of those agencies to have a member on a policy board and to make actual policy (and) financial decisions, sign contracts, etc.,” she told a Chronicle reporter in a follow-up interview on Thursday.
The move will ultimately require a ballot measure to establish a dedicated 911 tax that would fund the communications center.
“This is a sales and use tax, it is not anything to do with property taxes,” Libby-Jones explained Monday, “This will actually allow us to gather some funding from that I-5 corridor, those passer-by tourists that come and shop in our centers … because they have an impact on our 911 system and to date, we haven’t been able to actually recoup any money from them.”
The tax would cover all 911 operations and infrastructure except the radio infrastructure, meaning the agencies that use the dispatch radio will still have to pay user fees.
Libby-Jones said the division expects those user fees to be “much, much less” than what they’re currently paying under county leadership.
“We’re hoping that this can help stabilize funding for 911 without impacting our member agencies and possibly helping them in the future,” she said.
The Lewis County Board of Commissioners did recently earmark $4.5 million of congressional American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding to upgrade equipment at the Lewis County 911 dispatch center and several radio communication sites used by county law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical services personnel.
Those improvements will go forward as planned, Libby-Jones said.
“I think the end question is, because the county will be the owner of that equipment because they've expended the funds, whether that equipment will be then sold or transferred to the new entity that's formed under the ILA,” Libby-Jones told a Chronicle reporter on Thursday.
The combined user committee has set a goal of establishing new governance by July.
“I don't know if that's necessarily realistic. But at this time, that's kind of the goal we're shooting towards, but keeping that flexible,” Libby-Jones said.
The combined user committee is working with an attorney who Libby-Jones said has experience with helping other agencies establish independent governance.
“We’re really in the infancy of this, so there’s still a lot of unknowns,” she added.
