St. Louis passes sales tax for emergency communications system
By Paul Hampel
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch
ST. LOUIS — A sales tax to set up a new emergency communications system in St. Louis County won handily in voting Tuesday. The tax is expected to raise $16 million a year to finance $100 million in bonds over 20 years.
Skip Mange, the spokesman for Citizens in Support of E-911, said one feature of the new system — pinpointing the locations of cell phone calls — resonated with voters.
"We conducted polls and that issue was the one that was most compelling to voters," Mange said. "New radios for first responders was also important, but not as much as the cell phone factor."
About $80 million would pay for a system that would allow all police, firefighters, ambulance other emergency personnel to talk with one another by radio.
At present, departments have incompatible radios.
An additional $10 million would go for gear to pinpoint the locations of cell phone calls and to upgrade emergency sirens; and another $10 million is allocated for project management and engineering work.
Mange said work will start first on installing new sirens. The start of construction of new 911 centers and delivering new radios will take about two years, he said.
Fenton Mayor Dennis Hancock said he recognized the need for such a system but that it was unfair to pay for it through a sales tax.
"I guess it's the will of the people," Hancock said Tuesday night. "But I think government sometimes doesn't do a service to its constituents asking them to approve taxes and essentially scaring them into voting for it."
The federal government requires public safety communications operators to narrow the band of the frequencies they use by Dec. 31, 2012.
Switching to the new frequency will make current equipment obsolete. Proponents of the proposition asserted that establishing a countywide system would allow bulk purchases of new radios and other hardware that would save taxpayers money.
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