New 9-1-1 Center Could Benefit By Assembly Bill

CREST HAVEN – The freeholders’ agenda for the board’s Aug. 9, 7 p.m. meeting included a resolution, which was likely to pass, in support of an Assembly bill (A1821) that would “properly allocate 911 System and Emergency Trust Fund Account monies” to county, regional and municipal 911 centers. 
The subject has long been a sore point for freeholders and Office of Emergency Management Coordinator Martin Pagliughi.
The reason, according to Pagliughi, is because there is a monthly charge (90 cents per cell and landline phone line) which is designated by federal law to fund 911 emergency dispatch centers. Securing those funds has proven somewhat difficult.
“In 2014 the state took in $128 million,” Pagliughi told members of the Coalition of Civic Associations Nov. 9, 2015. “Since 2009, all that money goes right into the general fund of the state.”
“It was federal legislation created for that money in every state,” he continued. Then the director cited a Pennsylvania county that sued the commonwealth, “Because they grabbed some of that money.”
“It’s for training, upgrade of equipment and building dispatch centers,” said Pagliughi.
At present that is what Cape May County is doing at the Lower Township Public Safety Building, renovating the cavernous structure at the county airport in Erma to use in part, for 50 years, as the county’s central emergency dispatch center.
Freeholders awarded a $5.1-million contract June 28 to Arthur J. Ogren Inc. to complete the project. While Lower Township will pay about $3 million of the cost for its police headquarters, other municipalities will pay their share of the dispatch center. Regardless, aid from the state from 911 system fund would be used as specified by law.
In 2008, the county received funds from the state to perform a study of the central dispatch concept, Pagliughi said.
The resolution urges the governor and Legislature to support the bill. That means action on the bill that was introduced Jan. 27 of this year and referred to the Assembly Homeland Security and State Preparedness Committee.
Assemblyman Bruce Land (D-1st) is a member who voted with four peers May 19 to unanimously approve the bill.
While funding is prioritized in the bill, first to counties, then to regional 911 call centers, and finally to municipal 911 centers, it also contains a provision that would temporarily raise the per-line monthly charge to 99 cents from its current rate (90 cents) for 36 months after passage of the bill into law.
A mandate of the bill is that, within three years after enactment, all 911 service facilities must be equipped with a Next Generation 911 system that will process text message requests for emergency services.
Foreseeing misuse of the 911 text message capability, the bill’s drafters propose to make it a fourth-degree crime to knowingly send a text message to a 911 emergency system “without purpose of reporting the need” for the service.
The bill’s sponsors are Assemblyman Herb Conaway, Jr. District 7 (Burlington), Assemblyman David P. Rible. District 30 (Monmouth and Ocean), Assemblyman Daniel R. Benson, District 14 (Mercer and Middlesex), Assemblywoman Nancy J. Pinkin, District 18 (Middlesex).