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City Of Montrose Reeling From County's Fees

The city of Montrose is looking at a very tight budget for next year, and part of that is due to dispatching fees. 

"The county runs what's known as a regional dispatch center," says Montrose Mayor Bob Nicholson, "it takes the calls from the public and distributes them to the appropriate safety provider."

It’s a pretty important service, but this service isn’t free.  Everyone that uses it, from the city of Montrose to the Ouray Sheriff’s Department, to Telluride, pays Montrose County for the dispatch service.  The more they use the service, which is tracked by the contacts the service makes, the more the county charges.  The city has a problem though.

"If you look at our [use] over the past several years, you would see that in 2008, we had 276,000 contacts.  In 2013 we had 274,000, so we're basically in a flat line," says Nicholson.

He says the even though their uses haven’t gone up, the fees have.  In 2008, he says the city paid about $260,000.  This year, they paid $456,000.  For next year, the county wants $669,000.  That's more than double of what it was six years ago.

"One of the problems we've had," says Nicholson, "is we've had very scant ability to communicate our concerns back and forth with the county, and that concerns us greatly."

There’s been no word from the Montrose County Commissioners over this.  Repeated requests from KVNF to the county went unanswered.  It seems like the sheriff knows this is an issue though.

"The Sheriff at a meeting several months ago with the Board of County Commissioners said 'we must have a meeting with the city on this,'" said Nicholson, "so that's good."

However, the issue of the city’s budget remains.

"For us, it's going to require we find $350,000 to $360,000 worth of things we can cut.  That sounds simple, but it's not.  It really cuts into some service," says Nicholson, "we can do less road maintenance, we can provide less police presence.  Anything we cut there will be repercussions in our community, so it's hard for us."

Nicholson notes that the city is conservative in the budget estimates and they may end up with more revenue than they’re planning, which could take out some of the sting from the fees.