Discussions about first responder radio contracts during Tuesday’s county commission meeting set the stage for a possible standoff between the Baldwin County government and the Milledgeville city government.
Essentially, the county government soon will ask the city government to help pay the annual “maintenance” contract and “upgrades” contract to Motorola, the company that handles Milledgeville/ Baldwin County’s first responder radio system. The maintenance contract is $290,539 annually, while the upgrades contract is around $60,000 annually.
Milledgeville/Baldwin County’s current first responder radio system dates back to 2012. For the first four years, the Milledgeville city government helped split the cost. However, the city government hasn’t made a payment since 2016, and the county government has paid the entirety of the contracts for the last 10 years.
On Tuesday, county commissioners agreed to send a letter to the Milledgeville city government to establish an intergovernmental agreement, which essentially would be a cost-sharing agreement. County commissioners also will attempt to establish cost-sharing agreements with Georgia College & State University, the Baldwin County School District and Atrium Health Navicent Health, which also use the system.
The discussions during Tuesday’s meetings offered flashbacks to the Service Delivery Strategy (SDS) negotiations from 2018-2020. Those meetings, which set to establish a 10-year cost-sharing agreement between the Baldwin County government and Milledgeville city government on different services, often were adversarial, and common groud was hard to find.
The county government ran up a large legal bill, as an outside attorney oversaw the negotiations for the county. The process dragged on for so long that the Georgia Department of Community Affairs threatened to punish the county government and city government and take away funding if the two sides couldn’t come together. In the meantime, public library services were disrupted, and other services were threatened.
During those SDS meetings, county commissioners and city council members often spoke in terms of “we” and “them” and “us” and “they,” despite the fact that they all lived in the same place. That mentality was back on display during Tuesday’s county commission meeting.
“It’s my understanding that we own the switch, and we own the infrastructure,” said Commissioner Scott Little. “We figure out what we’re owed, we generate and invoice...and give a certain 30 days, 60 days terms, and if this isn’t paid, then you don’t have access to the switch.”
“Turning off the switch” would basically mean that Milledgeville police officers and firefighters wouldn’t be able to communicate with each other on their Motorola radios.
Meanwhile, Commissioner Kendrick Butts floated the idea of “back pay.”
“Will we be able to get back pay for not paying us during that timeframe?” Butts asked County Attorney Brandon Palmer. “Can we elmininate their radios and say that we’re not going to pay for them?”
In theory, if the county government ultimately sends the city government an invoice for “back pay,” that invoice would be somewhere in the range of $1.6 million.