Local voters may settle a hot dispute over who will pay for operations of the new consolidated emergency dispatch system when they cast ballots next month.
Voters will either stop the fight or send the combatants back into the ring to duke it out—with no clear winner in sight.
Voters should stop the fight by voting in favor of Proposition 2 to raise $835,000 a year by raising property taxes county-wide by $6.71 per $100,000 of property value. The owner of an average $426,000 home would pay $29.25 per year.
The alternative is to have each government entity—all the cities and Blaine County—pay by the call for dispatch services. This would mean, for example, that Hailey would pay a lot more than Sun Valley.
Sounds fair. It is fair. There's just one problem.
Neither the cities nor the county adequately supervised the working group that put together the plan to implement the new dispatch system. So, even as the equipment was being installed, Hailey, Bellevue and Carey got bills for their shares of annual operations that they say they didn't expect. In fact, they say they were shocked by the bills.
Thereafter, Hailey, Bellevue and Carey went into one corner and Sun Valley, Ketchum and Blaine County went into another and began to fling unflattering phrases at one another.
The three down-valley cities say they can't afford the pay-by-the-call costs, that it would decimate their budgets and that the costs should be spread through property taxes.
The two upper-valley cities say that's not fair because their taxpayers will pay more since they own more expensive properties. They argue this scheme will force upper-valley taxpayers—many of whom don't live here—to subsidize down-valley residents.
We think subsidies run both ways—up and down the valley. Down-valley residents were long ago priced out of the upper valley. As a result, today they subsidize upper valley residents with both the uncompensated time they spend on the highway commuting to jobs and with skyrocketing vehicle costs. It's time they might otherwise spend with their families or working other jobs.
Whether homes in the upper valley are occupied or not, they potentially need emergency fire and police dispatch.
The quickest and easiest way out of this government-generated mess—distasteful as it is—is to raise property taxes.
