Pierce County voters OK tax to upgrade 911 system

Voters on Tuesday showed a willingness to pay to overhaul Pierce County’s emergency dispatch system. Proposition 1, which would increase the sales tax by 0.1 percent countywide, had a comfortable early margin, election returns show.

“We’re confident that the voters of Pierce County realized that we have a broken 911 system,” said Matt Frank, a Tacoma firefighter and co-chairman of the Fix911 campaign.

Frank said the campaign’s success in getting out the facts about the county’s need to improve its radios and emergency communications won over voters.

The proposal, sent to voters by the Pierce County Council in July, creates a new 911 agency by combining the county’s three largest dispatch centers and building two new facilities: one for police, one for fire and emergency medical response.

It would also pay for upgraded radio equipment for police and fire departments that join the new agency. The Federal Communications Commission has required nonfederal public safety agencies to communicate using different radio channels by Jan. 1, 2013, to make efficient use of the radio spectrum for a growing number of users.

The money, combined with a portion of the enhanced 911 tax, would generate $14 million a year to make debt payments on the new radio equipment and dispatch centers and pay the operating costs of the new agency, known as South Sound 911.

Supporters say the proposal tackles the county’s aging and patchwork 911 system, providing residents with improved service and saving participating cities and towns a combined $6 million annually.

Citizens for South Sound 911, the pro-tax campaign, raised more than $103,000, according to filings with the Washington Public Disclosure Commission, the state’s campaign finance watchdog.

The anti-tax campaign raised $1,300, opponent Chris McNutt said, primarily from a Puyallup dispatch union. Opponents didn’t raise enough money to have to file detailed contribution and spending reports with the PDC.

Critics said the measure was bloated. They understood the need to replace the aging radio equipment but took issue with increasing the local sales tax for the next 25 years to pay to build and operate two dispatch centers and a regional agency.

McNutt, who designed the website opposing the tax proposal, noted that it was difficult to counter the other side’s arguments. Using logic and statistics to press their case wasn’t enough to counter the supporters’ emotional arguments that the tax proposal would protect the lives of firefighters and police officers, McNutt said.

“We didn’t have an emotional hook,” he said. “I personally wasn’t willing to invent one.”

County Executive Pat McCarthy said the 911 plan provides an “opportunity for us to provide the tools that our first responders need for communications, with each other and across jurisdictional lines, and to better protect and serve us.”

She said the next step would be convening a separate governing body to create the new agency. She indicated it would take a couple of years to get it up and running.

McNutt said supporters would look into legal action to challenge the tax proposal over a misprint in the printed voters’ material. The numeric percentage on the ballot and voters’ pamphlet incorrectly stated the proposed tax is 0.01 percent instead of 0.1 percent. Officials caught the error too late to correct it on the printed materials and said it was inadvertent. County officials said it was a minor error that doesn’t affect the meaning or intent of the measure.

Frank said his campaign gave voters the correct information, and the county elections office made every effort to notify voters of the error. McCarthy said opponents have a right to challenge the measure but “to me, it’s not moving us forward.”

Christian Hill: 253-274-7390

christian.hill@thenewstribune.com

Twitter: @TNTchill