Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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November 22, 2009

911 calling for county authority

By GREG JORDAN

PRINCETON — Work is underway to create a new county authority that would govern the operations of the Mercer County 911 Center.

Bobby Hoge, director of the 911 center, said there were no plans to turn the emergency center’s operations over to a private company.

“Absolutely not,” Hoge said. The goal is to create an authority similar to the Mercer County Airport Authority and the Mercer County Solid Waste Authority.

County Commissioner Jay Mills said the commission planned to discuss the idea during their next public meeting on Dec. 8 at the Mercer County Courthouse. A new authority would not change the 911 center’s operations, he said.

“They pretty much do that anyway,” Mills said. “They would just have their own board like they do now.”

Attorney Robert Holroyd, who heads the 911 center board, said current law allows for the formation of a 911 authority.

“There’s a statutory provision that permits the county commission to create 911 as an authority of the county in the same type of relationship as the airport and other entities owned by the county, and that basically is what the county commission has decided to do,” Holroyd said.

Holroyd said there would be “very little” in the way of changes in the 911 center.

“The county commission would continue to appoint the members and the county would control the financial assets of the 911 center as before,” Holroyd said. “They (commissioners) would appoint them (authority members) and remove them if they didn’t like what they did. The county would have a seat on the commission, exactly like the county airport authority and the county building authority.

Having a 911 authority would give it the ability to organize emergency responses more quickly that it would if it had to go through the county commission each time this was necessary, he said.

Creating a 911 authority also would not change county taxes, Holroyd said.

“It just takes the day-to-day personnel matters and things like that out of the county commission and puts it into the hands of the authority. Other than that, the county commission still has total control over it,” he said.

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