Consider, for a second, that you are experiencing your worst nightmare — a loved one has fallen unresponsive, perhaps, or a fire is threatening to decimate your home. In that moment, all you’d want is for help to arrive and assist you with your emergency. But suppose that, after calling 911, you hear the ringing tone for a minute or more. Would that not be the longest minute of your life? Would that not be surreally cruel, prolonging your tragedy and possibly jeopardizing the very life and health of you or those you love?
This was reality for 130 Boone County residents last year. One-hundred and thirty calls to 911 went unanswered for longer than a minute — 60 excruciating seconds. Some of the calls even took three or four minutes to be answered.
Such is the dismal state of Boone County’s Public Services Joint Communications, responsible for all 911 calls in the county. Critically understaffed, cruelly underfunded, it is a sad manifestation of the City of Columbia’s poor prioritization. In the absence of the funds it deserves from the city, a 3/8 cent sales-tax increase will be presented to voters April 2 as Proposition 1. The increase would triple PSJC’s budget and allow it to hire more staff, update its equipment and move to a central location. We reluctantly support the proposition — it’s necessary to restore the quality of our 911 system, but it shouldn’t have gotten this bad.
Emergency services should be the sacred cow of our city and county’s budget. However, as Columbia’s population has exploded in recent decades, the city (which is responsible for three-fourths of PSJC’s 911 calls) and county have failed to keep emergency services on pace. An advisory board created to evaluate Boone County’s emergency management services [found in its January report](http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/560610/911-emergency-management-advisory-committee.txt) that PSJC’s “current staffing levels are insufficient, information technology and telecommunication equipment are outdated, and facilities are inadequate to meet community needs.” In fact, the very building the call center is housed in — the old armory on East Ash Street — is itself unable “to withstand a major storm event such as a tornado,” which would jeopardize its ability to serve residents in such an emergency. That sort of defeats the purpose of an emergency communications service, doesn’t it?
We wish these gaping deficiencies in our 911 services would have been taken care of through smart money management and budgeting by the city of Columbia, which has seen most of the recent population growth and puts the most strain on PSJC. Allowing our joint communications services to fail national safety standards and let Boone County residents down in their time of need is unacceptable and a huge embarrassment.
At this point, we’d rather there be a dedicated portion of sales tax be established through this increase to bring the service up to date than to have the City of Columbia and Boone County continue to underfund it. We sympathize with Keep Columbia Free, whose director Mark Flakne has been vocal against this proposition — it should not require _extra taxes_ to ensure our county has adequate emergency-communications services. But PSJC has been allowed to lapse far too long, and deserves whatever increase it can get.
When it comes down to that moment of emergency, when it’s time for you to call 911 and expect a prompt and helpful response, will a 3/8 cent sales tax increase continue to be an intolerable outrage? We urge you to vote yes on Proposition 1 on April 2 and help restore our county’s emergency communications to where they should be.