[1/15/03]Phone surcharges up to two-and-a-half times larger could replace city and county subsidies to the emergency-dispatch center, city officials said Tuesday. Supervisors agreed to consider the idea of shifting the cost out of their budgets.

Any change would require action by the Legislature.

Already, Vicksburg has proposed that both boards ask the Legislature to raise caps again on residential and commercial phone-line taxes from $1 to $2.50 and $2 to $5.

Each year’s raise would be limited to one-third of that year’s surcharge. Mayor Laurence Leyens said that means a three-year phase-out of the subsidy paid from the city and county general funds.

Voters here approved establishing E-911 services through a computerized central emergency dispatching system in 1988. They agreed to pay 85 cents per month on their home phone bills. The money, in turn, was to buy equipment, pay dispatchers and access fees for the phone company database.

The fees never raised enough money, however, and despite increases in the fees, supplements have been been increased and the 911 budget has grown about eightfold to $840,107 during 12 years of operations.

Under the plan, people would see phone surcharge increases of up to $1.33 and $2.66, for residential and commercial lines respectively. If the tax were increased the maximum amount each year, the new legislative caps would be reached in the fourth year of the plan.

Surcharges for cell-phone lines, currently $1 each month, are not addressed by the city’s proposed request for legislation, and would apparently remain the same.

Warren County Board of Supervisors President Richard George said the city’s proposal “bears some consideration,” but declined to give a timetable for supervisors to decide whether to support it.

The Legislature’s current regular session began Jan. 7 and is scheduled to end April 6. There is no deadline for the introduction of such locally specific bills.

The cost of the Warren County E-911 Center’s operations not covered by the surcharges has been shared by the general funds administered by the city and county boards. This fiscal year’s agreed percentage split is 70-30, with city taxpayers funding the larger share.

Raising the legislative caps on the surcharges would address what a citizen study last year called “an apparent oversight in the original legislation” intended to fund such dispatch centers.

“The surcharge is generally sufficient for the equipment, upgrades and some management costs, but woefully inadequate for funding all of the required dispatching personnel,” said the study report, written by Paul Ingram with help from Rusty Hawkins and Bryan Brabston.

About 75 percent of the county’s phone lines are inside the city limits, Leyens said, and he has maintained that the dual taxing structure locally means city residents get double-dipped for the same services. The study panel’s report agreed, but did not find the arrangement inequitable.

“Here’s your set of services; here’s what it costs,” Leyens said of the surcharge plan’s message to county telephone customers.

In a separate proposal, members of the two boards agreed to ask the Legislature for the city to be granted greater leeway in abating taxes on improvements made to commercial buildings or rental properties.

Renovations or improvements to buildings throughout the city would be eligible for tax-exemption by both city and county boards under the legislation they agreed to request. Such exemptions are now limited to designated central-business or historic-preservation districts.

“This is another economic-development tool,” Leyens said of abatements, adding that all would be subject to the city board’s approval.

“We need a criteria that measures the economic impact,” Leyens said in response to a question about potential charges of discrimination from tax-abatement decisions. “There ought to be a mechanism and a methodology for that so that the public understands why we chose to do it here and not there.”

Returning to an issue the mayor raised about a week and a half ago, Alderman Gertrude Young asked supervisors to reconsider allowing the joint sessions to be videotaped by the city’s TV station, Channel 23. Leyens has asked that the meetings be taped, if not broadcast, to hold participants accountable for what they say in them.

George again defended supervisors’ continued reluctance to have the meetings taped, repeating that sometimes deliberations on such matters can be sensitive and are thus better done off-camera.