City of Griffin & Spalding County at odds over 800 MHz User Fees

[SCPD]

Griffin Daily News - Griffin, GA

Spalding County and the city of Griffin are scheduled to meet again next month to try and work out user fees the city will have to pay for using the county 800 MHz communication system. City officials have questioned having to pay for a county-wide service, as the system was purchased as a county-wide SPLOST project and claiming it would be double taxation of their residents. (Read more in the link below)


County, city to meet again on 800 MHz user fees - Griffin Daily News: News

 

[MTS2000des]

Interesting argument being made about these user fees by city residents who do in fact, get taxed twice. If a SPLOST or county general fund was used to procure and operate said radio system, it really does come as a "double whammy" to those residents who live within those cities.

Maybe those cities should just bank that money and procure their own solution (often at a lower cost), since they are being taxed for it anyway.

I see this being an issue where I live, now our county has proposed to used SPLOST money to, in my opinion, perform an unnecessary forklift upgrade of our barely 6 year old phase 1 800 DTRS to phase 2, and replace ALL the perfectly good and fully supported (according the vendor, until 2018 for portables and 2020 for mobiles) subscriber hardware. That 13.1 million dollars could have hired and paid the salaries of some desperately needed police officers.

The cities in my county are likely going to face the same problem, having to replace otherwise perfectly functional and otherwise current subscriber radios to remain on the county DTRS.

Just another reminder of the true cost many of these systems really require over their lifespan (which seems to be made shorter and shorter nowadays) yet the price always seems to go up, up and away.