Pictured is St. Joseph County Central Dispatch on Wednesday. The agency is seeking a renewal and reduction of its millage, which if passed, would help fund the majority of services at Central Dispatch and 911.
By Robert Tomlinson
News Director
CENTREVILLE — It’s not often you hear of a governmental entity asking voters to decide on an operating millage renewal that comes with a reduction in said millage.
However, that is what St. Joseph County’s 911/Central Dispatch is asking county voters to consider on the Tuesday, Nov. 4 ballot, as the renewal of its operating millage for emergency 911 services will be put to a vote of the people.
Voters will be asked whether to renew the county’s existing emergency 911 operating millage at a 0.9 mill rate for a period of five years, 2026 through 2030. It would be a decrease from its current 0.9864 level being levied this year, which itself was a reduction from the 1-mill levy renewal approved by voters in 2019. It is expected to generate approximately $2,627,535 for 911 in the first year.
Despite the ask for a reduction, Stacey Bower, the county’s 911 director, says they will still be able to perform its duties at the same level they have been.
“We came up with the 0.9 figure because we think that we can operate on that without any trouble and it also takes into account things that we don’t know, things that might break or things that go end of life that come up at the last minute or different things like that,” Bower said.
The operating millage makes up a significant portion of the agency’s budget. In the 2025 St. Joseph County budget, the $2.5 million the millage is projected to generate accounts for 74 percent of Central Dispatch’s nearly $3.4 million in projected revenues. The 2026 recommended budget, put together and approved prior to the millage ask, estimated that the millage would account for just over 77 percent of the agency’s revenues. In previous years, it has accounted for around 70 percent of revenues.
Money from the operating millage, in conjunction with other funding sources, helps pay for personnel, upkeep of its radio system and towers, the infrastructure for 911 services, any software or computer systems dispatchers use to answer and dispatch 911 calls, and its text-to-911 service.
“Pretty much everything in the center is what it funds,” Bower said. “Without those programs, we would be paper, pencil, a lot slower, and a lot more room for error. All those things help things move along much quicker and with a lot less errors.”
Some of the services they use, such as the text-to-911 system that was implemented since the last millage renewal in 2019 thanks in part to that funding, Bower said are key to help dispatchers do their job or help with accessibility for people in crisis.
“It can help hearing-impaired people that can’t necessarily hear us or we can’t understand because of their disability. It could be a person in crisis that can’t actually talk on a phone because maybe they’re a victim of domestic violence or something like that,” Bower said.
In addition, Bower said there is the possibility of video calling for 911 and encryption of radio talk groups in the future, the latter of which Bower said Central Dispatch needs to have a plan for by 2026 for implementation in 2030.
“There are some things that we need upgraded and things that are coming down the pike that are mandated that we need to take care of and that’s what this millage is going to help with,” Bower said.
Another reason for the reduction in the millage, according to Bower, is that the agency has, in recent years, completed a project to switch from VHF radios to the 800-megahertz radio system that was started under former 911 director Dennis Brandenburg, which necessitated the increase to a 1-mill millage.
“A lot of that money was used for that [project],” Bower said. “We still need more money than we were back in the day when they originally had the 0.75 mill, because the cost of everything has increased and everything is just more expensive, but we didn’t think that we needed the whole 1 mill to operate. So, we were trying to use the money in good faith with the community and get things where they need to be but not have too big of an ask, because we want to be a good steward of the funds that we get from the community.”
Bower said she hopes voters consider the “safety of the community” when they go to the ballot box to decide on whether or not to support the millage renewal.
“They should consider the safety of the community, the safety of our officers and firefighters and EMS workers and anybody out in the field that’s a first responder. They also need to take in consideration that we cover the whole county, and we cover every agency in our county. We dispatch for all the police, all the fire, all the EMS, we handle all the mutual aid situations which come from outside our county on all sides of us including south into Indiana,” Bower said.
“We just do a lot of things; we have to have a lot of equipment to make everything happen, and I also try to take care of my people, because mental illness is a real thing, and PTSD for dispatchers is a thing. We try to keep people up to date on training, we try to make sure we’re there if they need counseling or if they need help that way, so there’s the human part of it too. We have to have qualified people, and we have to make sure we can pay a wage that can attract qualified people and people that can do the job well.”
In all, Bower said she hopes the election goes well, whether or not the millage is renewed.
“I just hope that everybody gets out and votes their conscience and hope we have a good turnout and it’s a good election,” Bower said.
Robert Tomlinson can be reached at 279-7488 or robert@wilcoxnewspapers.com.
