Clarion County could lose a quarter of its 911 funding if a new funding formula is approved by the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency.
“The state is in the process of recalculating the funding for the 911 department,” Jeff Smathers, director of Clarion County’s Department of Public Safety, said at Tuesday’s county commissioners meeting. “Across the state they are looking at 35 different formulas to make the funding more equitable for everybody.”
“Unfortunately in the rural areas mileage was one of the things that was taken away from the calculation,” Smathers added. “What they ended up with was population density. Those two factors do not play well for a rural area like ours.”
Smathers said calls on Interstate 80 account for 38% of all calls to the Clarion County 911 center.
“All of the rural counties along Interstate 80 and other interstate highways are facing significant cuts,” said Smathers.
PEMA plans to pull funding from 30 counties and give the money to the 37 other county 911 centers.
“We will see a cut of about $261,000 in Clarion County,” he said. “That is almost impossible for us to recover.”
The 911 Center has a total budget of about $1.1 million.
“Another thing that makes this almost impossible is that it is census based,” Smathers said. “There is no way this is going to be accurate. We are in the middle of a pandemic and the census is one of the last things people are thinking about. This is going to impact many counties in a negative fashion.”
Clarion and other rural counties have been arguing against adopting the new formula.
“Our argument is that to change the funding formula you need more people at the table,” said Smathers.
The PEMA advisory board is comprised of representatives from the state police, the fire academy and county commissioners.
“Our other argument was that our fee has been set at a $1.65 surcharge on all cell phones and landlines. In the mean time costs have skyrocketed,” said Smathers. “That doesn’t seem to mean anything to them.”
“We save a little bit and put it in a rainy day fund. If one of our towers would get hit by lightning it could cost us easily $100,000,” he said. “If we get cut by a quarter, I will have to use that fund to operate on.”
“Jeff brought this to us a few months ago and we have been working on it since then,” commissioner Ed Heasley said. “Hopefully someone will listen.”
Heasley said some of the neighboring counties will actually benefit from the new formula.
“It affects different counties in different ways,” said Heasley. “A lot of smaller counties with less than 20,000 population are actually getting an increase. The calculation just wasn’t making sense. The larger cities always feel they are under funded.”
“There is no deadline on this,” said Smathers. “They can vote to turn it down one week and then approve it the next week. All we are asking is that we get a fair plan.”
If the new formula is adopted it would not go into effect for one year.