FRANKLIN COUNTY, Mo. (KMOX) - Municipal police and fire agencies in Franklin County can expect to start paying for dispatch services which have traditionally been free.
Franklin County Presiding Commissioner John Griesheimer says it became increasingly clear that the county could no longer afford to provide free dispatching for the 15 first responder agencies it serves.
“Dispatching now has become so highly technical that we need to hire additional dispatchers plus we need to keep continually upgrading the equipment,” he explains.
The fees won’t kick in right away. Griesheimer says agencies will be given a year or so to build the new expenditure into their budgets.
Each agency will be billed based on the assessed valuation of the area they serve.
“Just for the dispatching itself – which consists of law enforcement calls, fire and EMS calls,” Sheriff Gary Toelke says, “there’s a lot of calls that go through the system.”
