Update: You now own a $7.2 million emergency service

UPDATE (1/9/15): After a brief, tepid discussion that lasted about as long as the Pledge of Allegiance that opened the meeting, the Council voted 7-2 Thursday night to approve the contract analyzed below.

(Originally published 1/8/15)

The City Council is expected tonight to commit Troy taxpayers to a 10-year, $7,220.000 contract.

That will come about, if it goes as expected, when they pass agenda Resolution No. 7 to authorize "the Mayor to enter into a centralized dispatch of emergency services agreement with Rensselaer County."

As I wrote last month, this is a pact Mayor Lou Rosamilia sent to the Council with no competing proposal after he and his minions worked it out with County Executive Kathy Jimino and her staff to continue the city-county  relationship. Rosamilia had briefly flirted with Albany County for the services, but inexplicably dropped that possibility in favor of sending the Council what amounts to a no-bid deal with the  County.

There is no question that having the County handle all 911 emergency dispatching calls works well. What is in question, at least to my mind, are the price and the oversight.

What we do know is that about nine months ago the County proposed raising its 911 dispatching fee for Troy by an astounding 75.5%, to a half-million dollars this year. Calls for Troy's ambulance, fire and police services make up about 40% of the county dispatch center's business, or about 53,600 calls a year. That should, but obviously did not, give the City some negotiating clout. It also means the County is getting away with hiking the cost to Troy taxpayers from $5.32 to $9.33 per call. I have seen no public discourse justifying such a thing.

That, I submit, is ludicrous, as is a 10-year commitment that would see the fee climb to $1,020,000 in the tenth year. You will see on the accompanying chart that you, dear taxpayers, are about to suddenly be committed to pony up a total of $1 million for the first two years of this pact, then seeing it jump significantly every year thereafter.

Putting aside the City's current financial distress, which the state is watching closely, it should be realized that there is no guarantee the service actually will warrant such annual increases. Yes, there is an opt-out clause. But, any such decision would have to result from a semiannual review of the services by an "oversight committee" consisting of the county executive (or designee);  the Troy mayor (or designee); the county public safety director and the deputy director; the Troy police chief; the Troy fire chief, and "a union member/employee of the County Bureau of Public Safety."

What that means is that on a seven-person committee the entity providing the service,  not the customer,  has a built-in majority.

Fox.

Henhouse.

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