More than 80 percent of the annual appropriation for the Garland County 911 Communications Center's AT&T bill was spent in the first seven months of 2019, a cost overrun the county attributed to AT&T's arbitrary billing practices.
A spreadsheet presented to the Garland County Quorum Court showed the emergency 911 fund is paying more than $23,000 a month for AT&T's Hosted Solutions service that receives 911 calls and dispatches first responders using internet protocol-based Next Generation 911 technology.
The $70,000 the quorum court appropriated from the fund earlier this month will supplement the $192,000 the county's 2019 budget appropriated to the line item. The county finance department said the fund had a $500,479 balance after the appropriation. Almost $1.4 million in 2019 revenue has been projected. Through August, 65 percent of the $1.2 million appropriated for 911 operations had been spent.
The county expected its 911 bill to be high as its call center and others in the county began transitioning from trunk phone lines to Next Generation technology last year, requiring it to pay for both services during the transition. Department of Emergency Management Director Bo Robertson said the monthly bill continues to rise despite numerous unnecessary phone lines and services being cut since the transition.
The county also pays AT&T bills for call centers operated by the city of Hot Springs, Hot Springs Village and the Arkansas State Police's Troop K. Village and ASP bills are paid from the county's share of public safety charges providers collect from customers. The county pays the city's bill from the latter's population-based share of the quarterly installment the state remits to the county's emergency 911 fund on behalf of providers.
The 911 fund should see a significant revenue increase when the public safety charge increases from 65 cents a month per cellphone connection to a $1.30 later this year.
"No one budgeted for $24,000 a month," said Robertson, who took over the county's 911 operations from the sheriff's department last year. "Historically, every time we call AT&T to complain about how none of this makes sense our bill will drop down to $16,000, but then it will continue to rise. We had a meeting with AT&T to tell them we're not happy. They told us our tariffs continue to increase and are not capped.
"We've combed through all of our bills to help us identify what lines need to stay and what others aren't 911 related, can be cut or bills for their service transferred to the necessary entity."
Robertson said many charges are unsupported and unexplained.
"It's crazy how they can charge you for things out of the blue," he said. "One bill had a $3,000 charge for CPE, with no explanation for what CPE stands for. AT&T said it's customer-provided equipment, but there's no equipment we're providing since we took out the trunks and upgraded to a cloud-based system. That's the kind of stuff we've run into with AT&T billing."
Robertson said he hopes to have more information after meeting with an AT&T representative later this month. Billing frustrations aside, he said the new technology has improved response times.
"We've had instances where we've been able to pinpoint a caller's exact location," he said. "Through (automatic vehicle location) we've been able to guide deputies to the caller. Pairing up our AT&T Hosted Solutions with Motorola's AVL has paid off. We're getting to see some of the things we've planned for and worked hard to achieve start to pay off."
Robertson said response times for volunteer fire departments have also improved since the county's call center began dispatching them in the spring. Calls for service previously had to be transferred from the county or city call centers to LifeNet ambulance service, which dispatched volunteer firefighters prior to the transition.
"On average, they're getting on scene quicker because we've reduced a transfer and took out the middleman," Robertson said. "In some cases it's considerable."
Local on 09/18/2019