Serving the High Plains

Dispatch board still working on JPA

QCS Managing Editor

Progress on a joint powers agreement (JPA) to guide operations of Quay County’s emergency radio dispatch system has been delayed while the system’s governing board works out issues related to independence and employee pay.

Approval of the JPA was taken off agendas of the Tucumcari City Commission and the Quay County Commission for their first meetings of 2015 because the Tucumcari/Quay Regional Emergency Communication Board had not approved the JPA. The communications board must approve the JPA before it is sent around to city, county and village governing bodies for their approval.

The communications board is still hammering out issues related to increasing the board’s control over day-to-day management of the dispatch system, which currently operates at Tucumcari Police Department headquarters and under city management. The board is preparing to work with new funds that come from a one-twelfth of one-percent gross receipts tax that Quay County voters approved in September in a special election.

The tax is expected to bring in about $370,000 a year to pay most of the $500,000 required annually to operate the emergency communications dispatch center, Richard Primrose, county manager, said. The rest of the funds are expected to come from 45-percent shares provided by Tucumcari and the county, with the remaining 10 percent coming from the villages of Logan and San Jon and Harding County.

Primrose said proceeds from the gross receipts tax increase will start arriving in the county in March.

Scot Jaynes, the dispatch center’s manager, and the dispatchers are officially city employees, even though their pay comes from all of the communities that use the center. Those communities include Quay County, the villages of Logan and San Jon, and Harding County contribute to the dispatch center’s operating funds.

As city employees, the dispatchers answer non-emergency phone calls to Tucumcari Police and greet visitors in the lobby of the police headquarters building as part of their duties.

Quay County Manager Richard Primrose told the county commission on Jan. 12 that members of the communications board say the dispatchers should not be distracted by city phone and reception duties.

Independence of management is another of the board’s goals, according to communications board president Larry Wallin. Wallin said independent management would help streamline dispatch operations and would result in the most efficient use of proceeds from the new gross receipts tax.

The transition of dispatch employee pay and benefits from the city of Tucumcari to an independent agency control is the other key issue, Primrose and Jarred Langenegger, Tucumcari’s city manager said, with Wallin concurring.

“We want to make sure we can make that transition without causing loss of retirement and health benefits for dispatch center employees,” Wallin said. Board member and Tucumcari city officials are currently working that out, Langenegger said.

Wallin also said the board is looking for ways to make dispatchers’ pay competitive to avoid having dispatchers train under the Quay County system, then find work elsewhere for better pay.