Starke County 9-1-1 Fund Losing Money

The Starke County Council members heard from Starke County Sheriff’s Matron, Chris Smith, at their meeting this week.  In her report, Smith said the 9-1-1 fund should be solvent for the remainder of the year.  She quoted a figure of $57,826 in the fund.

The bad news is that long term, the fund may go into the “red”.  One problem is that the 9-1-1 fund is financed primarily by land line telephone customers.  With so many people switching to cell phone service and abandoning land line service in their home, the same fee is not being received.  As a matter of fact, no one seems to know how much the cell phone companies should be paying.

The Council instructed Attorney, Marty Lucas, to see if there is any way to get the cell phone companies to pay their fair share.  Lucas said yesterday that he is researching where to get that information, if there is such a place.