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ORION -- Henry County mayors are refusing to pay the countys proposed new charge for police dispatching.

Mayor James Cooper told trustees Monday that a letter to the county which he delivered to the courthouse last week includes the mayors refusal to pay. He said Annawan Mayor Tim Wise gave him the letter, and he collected signatures and turned it in to the county.

Orion is being asked to pay $4,400 to start with this year, eventually working up to an estimated $17,500.

He cited a number of reasons for the refusal. No one had advance warning. The calls include those outside municipal boundaries. There are charges each time an officer logs on and off. In the case of both Orion and Cambridge, the towns already have contracts with the county that include wording about paying for dispatching. Orion is paying about $200,000 per year for police coverage. He said he didnt know how the county distributed the costs or even how it arrived at the original sum for police dispatching. Towns like Bishop Hill, Osco and Lynn Center were not included.

There are just a lot of things in there that need to be addressed and clarified, he said. The only fair way to do this is everyone in the county pays to do this.

We do understand costs are an issue and are willing to be included in that fee, but we need to be included in how youre figuring that, he added.

Trustee Steve Newman suggested the change might cause the village to re-think its mode of policing.

We may bring back the idea of maybe having our own police, maybe having full-time coverage; I dont know, he said.

Mayor Cooper said he felt the county is aware of the unpopularity of its concept, and it may not move forward from a Feb. 9 public safety meeting to the Feb. 16 county board for a vote, but stranger things have happened.

The board also got an update on the failure of the countys storm siren. Mayor Cooper reported Supreme Radio is coming to Orion at no charge to change the radio frequency to enable the fire department to set off sirens. The mayor said he was adamant that this is a temporary fix because the village doesnt have around-the-clock personnel to monitor events.

He said county emergency management director Mat Schnepple and public safety chairman Marshall Jones met with him in Orion and stood by the countys decision to wait for a federal grant to fix the emergency siren. He said he felt if anything were to happen in the interim, residents would blame him as the mayor and his son-in-law as fire chief.

Trustee Bob Mitton said he got blank looks when he first confronted the county after noticing the absence of Tuesday's test sirens. Mayor Cooper repeated his dismay that it had been six months after the county first found out about the problem in July. He said he was confident the three affected villages including Annawan and Woodhull would have come up with the $5,500 to repair the siren had they known about it.

It could be a year before thats fixed is what were looking at now, he said.

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Orion mayor: Towns defying proposed fees - Quad-Cities Online