[11/14/01]unty officials plan to meet Friday in an attempt to iron out differences in the terms of financing shared ambulance and 911 services.

Members of the Vicksburg Board of Mayor and Aldermen and the Warren County Board of Supervisors plan to met at 2 p.m., at City Hall Annex. Although neither board will be meeting officially so official decisions can be made the meeting will be televised on city Cable Channel 23.

Other topics will include two agreements for city tax assessment and collection through the Warren County Tax Collector’s and Tax Assessor’s offices.

The biggest topics of the meeting will be the ambulance and 911 agreements proposed by the city and county that differ by as much as $83,000 for emergency dispatching.

“We want to have a real discussion about real numbers and a real plan of work,” Mayor Laurence Leyens said.

City and county residents have shared the fire department-based public ambulance service since 1967 and the combined 911 dispatching center since 1989. Both services are funded in part by supplements from both governments based on contracts.

Under the agreement for 911 services passed by supervisors last week, the city would fund 75 percent of the salaries of dispatchers and the county would fund the remaining 25 percent.

Leyens has said those numbers are arbitrary and unfair to city taxpayers who pay a majority of county taxes. He has said making the city fund 75 percent of the cost when city residents pay about 65 percent of the taxes collected in Warren County is a “shell game.”

The city has proposed basing the cost on population and is asking the county to fund 46.8 percent or about $178,324. Under the county’s proposal, the amount would be about $95,258.

“The city is here in the county and they collect taxes here, but don’t send any money,” Leyens said.

Also to be discussed at Friday’s meeting is ambulance service for county residents. While city officials are asking to pay less for 911, Leyens is also asking the county to pick up more of the tab for the city emergency service outside of the municipal limit.

Richard George, president of the county board of supervisors, would not say if the board would contract with a private ambulance service if supervisors could not agree with the city, but said they have been looking at some private companies.

“We’re just looking at what’s available for alternate service if that need should arise,” George said.

Under the proposal passed by the city board last week, the county would pay a percentage of the ambulance costs based on population. That amount would be about $41,000 more than the $250,000 the county paid last year.

George said the board of supervisors has problems with the agreement proposed by the city and funds for the ambulance service are already budgeted for this year’s fiscal budget, which became effective Oct. 1. One problem he cited is that there is no cap on the amount the county might have to pay.

“We want to look at this in a positive way and go into this to strike a deal,” George said.

George said those deals, which are usually signed off on before the start of the fiscal year, are the priority for the meeting and have to be settled before any other topic.

But Leyens said he also wants to talk about the roles of city and county government and how the two will work together.

“We’re going to challenge them to work with us directly,” Leyens said. “In one community it doesn’t make sense to have one government going one way and another going the other.”