City-county feud must come to an end

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November 18, 2009

Anonymous Pharos-Tribune Wed Nov 18, 2009, 01:33 PM EST

When Logansport and Cass County officials first started talking about merging their emergency communications centers, there were lots of doubters.

Many folks liked things exactly the way they were. The city had dispatchers, and the county had dispatchers. The city had one data management system, and the county had another. Why mess with a good thing?

Others, though, could see the handwriting on the wall.

City and county government simply couldn’t afford to keep going their separate ways. They had to work together to survive in an atmosphere of shrinking tax revenues.

And besides, a combined dispatch center would provide better service. There would be no more misdirected 9-1-1 calls. Emergency response times would be faster.

The effort to combine the two centers took some time, but it came together more or less on schedule. Advocates of a more efficient local government applauded the project. Even the governor showed up to celebrate the achievement.

Sure, there were glitches here and there. Those from the city and county weren’t exactly embracing each other, but supporters of the effort said everything would get better with the passage of time. Just give folks a chance to get used to each other, and they’ll learn to play nice.

That was more than 10 months ago. Soon after the first of the year, the communications center will celebrate its first anniversary.

And yet, the two sides aren’t exactly moving closer together. If anything, the camps seem to be growing more entrenched.

The communications center governing board at one point had agreed to invest in an interface that would allow dispatchers to enter calls into both city and county software programs, but after discovering that the cost would far exceed the original estimate, the board decided to pull the plug.

Last week, the board talked about completely removing the city’s software from the dispatch center.

The vote ended in a tie. Three city representatives lined up on one side. Three county representatives lined up on the other. And the board chairman stood alone in the middle.

This is not the sort of model the governor was celebrating during his visit to Logansport.

If they want this experiment to work, the city and county officials must find a way to work together. They must put petty disagreements aside and strive for the common good.

We’re keeping our fingers crossed.

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