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Luzerne County Council’s 911 inquiry committee did not recommend cutting the time for responders to accept or reject a call before the next one on a municipality’s list can be summoned.
The temporary committee was created to dissect problems impeding emergency response after complaints about delays and at least two instances of crews dispatched to the wrong location for emergencies in which the subjects died.
The committee held its final meeting Tuesday and presented findings to the full council Tuesday night.
It had considered reducing the first-responder wait from nine to six minutes and the second from six to three minutes.
County 911 is free to summon the closest available unit if the first two selected by municipalities don’t respond, and this could be done after nine minutes instead of 15 with the proposed reductions.
Committee Chairman Harry Haas said volunteer emergency response organizations worry they can’t meet the reduced time and will face sanctions or lose their licenses as a result.
Committee member Eileen Sorokas said she supports volunteer organizations, and six minutes is not realistic for some of them. Many rural areas rely heavily on volunteers, she said.
The committee agreed with 911 Executive Director Fred Rosencrans’ proposal to continue educating municipalities about response time concerns in their jurisdictions and alerting the state when responders fail to summon crews.
Committee member Kathy Dobash said she disagreed with keeping the wait time the same and is hopeful 911 will reduce it in the future.
Councilman Rick Williams, who was not on the committee, said citizens who are concerned about receiving services as quickly as possible may disagree with the committee’s recommendation.
Berks County lowered its wait time after concluding the benefits outweighed the impact on some volunteer services, said Councilman Stephen A. Urban.
Problems with addressing should be addressed with rigorous staff training, clear location signs in each municipality and more discussion among municipal officials about renaming streets to eliminate duplicate names, the committee concluded.
Dobash asked if call takers can be assigned to the same zones to encourage familiarity.
Rosencrans said that’s not practical because the location of a call isn’t known until it is answered, and a significant staff increase would be needed to segregate call takers to specific regions.
The committee also recommended supporting legislation to increase phone fees to better fund 911 operations and upgrades and stepping up public awareness about 911 services.
Among the other matters discussed Tuesday:
• Audit
The county’s outside auditor – Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP — presented the final 2013 audit, which concluded the county spent $8.7 million more than it brought in that year.
With a $3.7 million carryover deficit from 2012, the county ended 2013 $12.54 million in the red, company CPA Andrea L. Caladie told council.
The primary causes of the 2013 shortfall, according to Caladie: debt repayments were $1.8 million over-budget due to rising fees, and the county did not obtain a $4.3 million cash advance on future back-tax payments.
County Manager Robert Lawton has said he purposefully avoided this cash advance because it’s a one-time fix that comes with fees and reduces the amount of money the county collects from back taxes in subsequent years.
CPA Adam Hartzel outlined two deficiencies categorized as “significant” in the audit, which means they are important enough to alert elected officials: the county has no formal written narrative of its accounting processes and lacks formal approval of many financial journal entries.
He also cited deficiencies that have been ongoing for years — cash disbursement and payroll duties that are not handled by multiple employees to create a check and balance and bank reconciliations not completed in a timely manner.
The current state of the deficit won’t be known until the 2014 audit is completed.
In light of prior late audits, Lawton has said he will submit his resignation if the 2014 audit is not completed by the June 30 home rule charter deadline.
County Budget/Finance Division Head Brian Swetz told council he is heavily focused on meeting the deadline.
“If I go out the door on the 30th, there will be a lot of people going out the door on the 29th,” Lawton said.
Dobash complained about his remark, saying, “I’m tired of the humor.”
“I’m not joking,” Lawton said.
• Election
County Election Board Chairman H. Jeremy Packard told council the board has largely relaxed its call of alarm about the county’s preparations for the May 19 primary.
Packard said the board is “less concerned” because the county has retained prior election director Marisa Crispell as a consultant to provide poll worker training and other assistance.
The county also is continuing the practice of retaining temporary election workers as the primary nears, he said. County Administrative Services Division Head David Parsnik, who has been overseeing the office since Crispell resigned to accept a non-county position last month, also has hired a contractor to code the ballot – a task Crispell had started completing in-house, he said.
The board told council in a letter last month the election was “dangerously prone to errors and omissions” due to the caliber and level of staffing.
• Manager search
Councilman Tim McGinley said he will work with two other council members to continue tweaking a proposed county manager search plan, though several council members said it doesn’t make sense to enact the plan unless the manager position becomes vacant.
Williams asked his colleagues Tuesday to consider a contract for the manager.
Lawton does not have a contract and recently has applied for positions in several other states.
Lawton asked council to put contract discussions on hold until the June 30 audit deadline. He also said he wants to focus on debt restructuring and expressed concerns about discussing a manager contract that may contain a pay increase when more than 200 non-union employees have not received raises for seven years, he said.