We Have Been Paying Ferry County 911 Taxes Since 1993. Why Are We Paying Taxes Before We Have Any Services?

In order for any county to receive assistance through the State E-911 Office from the 20 cents State Tax you are currently paying, a local 50 cents tax had to be implemented by the county. Ferry County has collected an average of only $16,000 per year in local 911 taxes, which is not even enough to fund one call-taker position; however, because this local tax was implemented we were able to collect almost $1.5 million from the State 911 Tax to build a new communications center and to correct our address system to be compatible with E-911 requirements. (Addressing will be covered under another item in this bulletin.) Currently, Ferry County residents are paying only $8.40/year per telephone number for this very critical service (50 cents/month local tax and 20 cents/month state tax.) Although the 20 cents State Tax was scheduled to be reduced to 10 cents after 12/31/98, the State is now realizing that if the state tax is reduced they will not have enough funding to subsidize lower income counties such as ours.