The timing of an election in St. Louis County on an 0.1-cent sales tax for a countywide emergency communications system remains uncertain as time for a standard process to put the proposal on the April 7 ballot grows short.

County Executive Charlie Dooley today asked the county council to resubmit a $120 million county bond issue to voters on April 7, but said nothing about the sales tax. Last fall, the county Emergency Communications Commission, which is promoting the system, asked the council to put the tax on the April ballot. A county council committee held a meeting on the matter, but took no action.

The new sales tax would raise about $15 million a year and finance an $80 million radio system that would allow police, fire and other emergency service workers at an emergency scene to talk to each other via radio. Voters in November rejected a 1.85-cent sales tax on out-of-state purchases; part that tax’s revenue would have paid for the communications system.

A bill to put the tax on the ballot must be introduced in the county council on Tuesday if the council is follow standard procedures and meet a Jan. 27 deadline for putting proposals to an April 7 vote.

Garry Earls, the county’s chief operating officer, said on Friday that Dooley has taken no position about the sales tax. Before making a decision, the county executive is looking for the St. Louis County Municipal League to prepare a plan to pass the sales tax, Earls said.

Tim Fischesser, executive director of the league, said league members are discussing a plan. They also are considering delaying a vote to get more time to put together a campaign for the sales tax, he said. Supporters would have to organize a campaign committee for the tax and that group would have to raise money for its effort, he said.

A Blue Ribbon Commission on St. Louis County’s infrastructure recommended that the sale tax go the April ballot “provided that the municipal league, municipal elected officials, polices chiefs, fire chiefs and fire districts take the active lead in promoting the passage” of the proposal, Skip Mange, commission chairman, wrote to Dooley and the council.

Mange, a former county council member, said he expects police and fire chiefs to back actively the proposal.

The Federal Communications Commission is requiring public safety agencies to make major changes to their equipment, mainly narrowing the radio frequencies they use, by 2012. Earls has said the federal requirement has the effect of forcing the safety agencies to stop polluting frequencies with bandwidth clutter and freeing frequencies for other uses.

Fischesser has said developing a system rather than having agencies make changes piecemeal would save money and ensure public safety workers could talk to each other. But supporters of the sales tax are concerned that once agencies start working on their own to meet the federal requirement, installing a countywide system would become very difficult or impossible.

The county has included the communications system in the 95 items in its nearly $1.8 billion proposal for federal economic stimulus money. But no one knows what the requirements for receiving that money would be and how the federal government would administer it.