McCulloch endorses sales tax for St. Louis County emergency communications system
Robert McCulloch
St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch has endorsed a 0.1-cent sales tax for an emergency communications system that is on the ballot countywide on Nov. 3.
“This is extremely important to the county and the whole area,” McCulloch this morning told Post-Dispatch editorial writers. Under the current communications system police, firefighters and other emergency personnel “can’t communicate and work with an antiquated system,” he said.
Police, firefighters, and others who deal with public safety “need much better equipment,” he said.
The proposal calls for spending $100 million; $80 million would go to building the emergency communications system; $10 million each would pay for installing equipment that would allow dispatchers to locate people who call by cell phone and for refurbishing the county emergency siren system.
The new system would allow all police, firefighters, emergency medical technicians to communicate with each other by radio. Currently, they have individual radio systems that mainly are not compatible with each other. Public works and hospital personnel would be part of the system.
The hardware would include computers that would route emergency calls to the proper agencies and avert overloads of calls in emergencies and towers for signals. The new system would provide new radios to police, firefighters and other public safety personnel.
A federal regulation requires public safety communications operators to narrow the band of the frequencies they use by Dec. 31, 2012. That regulation will require these agencies to obtain new radios, McCulloch noted. Building a countywide system bring economies of scale that would save the taxpayers money, he said.
A county resident who purchases a vehicle worth $20,000 would pay an additional $20 in sales taxes if the proposal passes. Total sales tax rates range in the county from 6.325 cents in the unincorporated area to more than 8 cents in some municipalities with the transportation development districts.
Tell me it ain’t true…a democrat endorsing a tax increase! I don’t believe it.
Already voted against it. Maybe Claire can get us some of that stimulus money. This bill does not have a stopgap end game for collecting this money which means they will collect it indefinately. Go find the money somewhere else.
Shall we assume that CoEx Dooley and the County Council have removed all fraud and waste from county government before coming to the voters for more money? My family sure has cut out our waste (soda, vacations, new shoes). How’m I kidding? They probably wouldn’t know waste if they were looking at it in their expense accounts.
“A federal regulation requires public safety communications operators to narrow the band of the frequencies they use by Dec. 31, 2012.” Once again the boys in Washington are pushing forth laws and plans that cost the states to spend more of their own money.
Nobody like taxes…. However, this is an attempt to actually save money. By buying one radio system the cost will be substantially lower than 70 cites, fire districts buying individual systems. Plus, we will get a system that actually works. Plus 911 location and sirens will be upgraded and added. There is NO stimulus money for this. Every penny of the tax is mandated by state law to be spent on emergency communications and will be overseen by a commission made up of police and fire chiefs and not politicians. We either pay a little more now and actually get something that works or pay more down the road for something that doesn’t. Thanks to Washington DC we don’t have a choice about doing most of it, but we do have choice about saving some money and solving several other problems at the same time. Visit http://www.prope911.org before you vote.