Alabama Chapter of NENA Quarterly Meeting
July 25, 2002
Lee County, Alabama

Welcome: President Sharon Thomas called the meeting to order. Invocation was given by Mr. Roger Humphrey and was followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Mrs. Thomas welcomed everyone to Opelika, Lee County and thanked Bill Meadows for being the host. Mrs. Thomas turned the meeting over to Bill Meadows. He welcomed everyone to Lee County and gave them an invitation to look at their backup PSAP and offered directions to their other PSAPs if anyone wanted to visit them. He introduced Lynne Bouce, Accountant for the Wireless CRMS Board, Micky Hail from InterAct and thanked InterAct for furnishing balloons. He instructed everyone to look at their first copy of the GIS system that InterAct had furnished them. He introduced Judge Bill English, Chairman of the Lee County Commission. Judge Bill English welcomed everyone to Lee County. He said that he appreciated the job that everyone did. He recognized the board members from Lee County – Herman Chapman, And Mr. Dan Goslin, Retired Chairman. Mayor Barbara Patton was introduced and she welcomed everyone to the City of Opelika and thanked everyone for the job that they did. Herman Chapman, Chairman of the Lee County 9-1-1 Board welcomed everyone.

President Thomas recognized guest and new members.

Approval of Minutes: President Thomas presented the April minutes. A motion was made to accept the minutes as presented; the motion was seconded, which unanimously carried.

Approval of Financial Report: Mr. Richard Holt presented the financial report for approval. A motion was made to accept the financial report as presented; the motion was seconded, which unanimously carried.

Discussion on Language Line: Richard Holt discussed the language line account. He stated that those who exceeded the minimum dollar amount consistently over the past six months would be receiving a letter from him along with additional information on how to set up their own language line account. He explained that their bill would then come directly from language line instead of going to him first and then being sent out to the individual 9-1-1 center.

Committee Reports:

Legislative Committee: President Thomas stated that Roger Wilson was appointed Chairman of the Legislative Committee. Roger Wilson informed everyone that the only thing under legislation that was pending for the Minimum Standards Committee was trying to come up with the legislation to be submitted in the next session in January. He said that they were going to be looking at that and doing a lot of pre-planning. He stated that it was going to be right after election year and that there would be a lot of Freshman Senators and Representatives. So they wanted to present that and get it passed and then come back in the next special session or next regular session and try to revamp the legislation for 9-1-1 across the whole 9-1-1 Bill. There are a lot of areas that need to be looked at still. There is a disparity between the wireless revenue and the wire-line. He asked everyone if they were tracking their wire-line income. He questioned that if it was decreasing and if the wireless was offsetting that decrease. He informed everyone that they were lucky if it was offsetting it because it was not offsetting his. He mentioned that in his county that the wire-line was decreasing and that the wireless was not offsetting. He warned that tey didn’t want to go down and try to do any monetary enhancements during the first year. He said that the second and third years would be the best to do it.

Donny Smith, Chambers County 9-1-1 expressed that he agreed with Roger Wilson about not going to Montgomery right off and asking for more money. He stated that he had done some research and discussed that his county had decreased about $30,000.00 a year in wire-line revenue and said that wireless didn’t make all that up. He said that they were looking specifically at a change to the section of the 9-1-1 code that deals with what he calls the population rule. He stated that Section 11-98-5 is based on population and he would like to see it based on access lines. Donny Smith stated that the capital is based on population and the revenue if based on telephone lines.

Wireless Board: Roger Wilson stated that at the last meeting the membership voted to ask the Wireless Board to process with the collection of prepaid even if that involved litigation. Since that time, the Wireless Board met and they did agree to pursue the collection of the prepaid without waiting to amend the legislation and they decided their first step would be an Attorney General’s Opinion. Lee Helms, Chairman of the Wireless Board wrote a request to the Attorney General. Confirmation was received that they had received the request. Roger Wilson said that he believed it was going to be a pretty quick turnaround. He informed everyone that Jim Porter, who is the attorney for the Wireless Board, had spoken with the Opinion Chief in the Attorney General’s Office and they were going to do a quick turnaround. So hopefully within the next month or so, we will have heard from them on that. He said that yesterday a representative from Verizon Wireless called and stated that they knew an opinion had been requested and wanted to know if we had heard from them. Roger Wilson told him that we hadn’t and he indicated that if we would let them know as soon as we heard something that they wanted to work with us to get that corrected. He said that he was going to try and be positive and hope that they would do that. The other thing that the board decided to do is to get a favorable ruling from the Attorney General that wireless prepaid cards are connections and they are subject to the CRMS service charge every month and that if a carrier does not comply with that within 90 days then the board is going to look at holding cost recovery payments to that carrier. He thought that it would force the carrier to sue the board and that would be a better route. Roger said it was his understanding that the Wireless Board could not sue the carriers, but that the individual districts within the state would have to sue the Wireless Board over the collections of pre-paid. He said he knew that it was not the way that he would want to go as a district, but if the situation was where the carrier sued the board then he’s just have to see. He said the board was prepared to act as soon as the opinion was received. There was discussion about the time frame that the board would give the wireless carriers. It was stated that when the opinion came back that Lee would be contacting both of the carriers to arrange a face to face discussion and they would be told that they have 90 days to start collecting. There was discussion about collecting back monies. Roger stated that if you collected the back monies that they would have to pay that out of their pocket. He said that there was no way that they could collect that from their customers. He stated that he felt that the only leverage that the board had was to withhold cost recovery money. Then the next month, they would hold collections. He hoped it didn’t come down to that. If Verizon and Cingular held their money, it is going to a large chunk because they are the two largest companies. He said he felt like before the end of August they would have a written opinion back and that he would keep everyone informed by group e-mail.

Conference Report: Jo Tranter said the Alabama NENA website was up for the conference. She stated that the conference flyers were mailed out about six weeks ago and that everyone should have received them by now. She said that there were about fifty people registered so far. The booths are pretty much taken however, there are about three to five that are in question. So, if anyone knew someone who wanted to sponsor or who wanted a booth they needed to contact Bill Brodeur. Jo informed that the Education Sessions were full. She stated that John Melcher, National President was going to do our opening speaker and Frank Raffaele who was on duty on September 11, 2002 was going to be our closing speaker.

Minimum Standards Committee: Minimum Standards had met four times since October. They are working on legislation to e presented in January. Another couple of meeting are scheduled in August. Art, Roger and a few other people have been enlisted to help with the writing of the legislation. The Committee will work really hard because they want to have the legislation presented this next year. Some programs were identified that meet Project 33. They are a 40 hour basic course that both NENA and APCO recommend. NCI, APCO, and HITS all have a program that certify and meet Project 33 which is what the Standards Committee has recommended. Some extra copies of demos of the HITS program were available for review – one per agency. Pat will be putting on the NENA web page a list of instructors for the State of Alabama so everyone can see a list of certified instructors. You might want to call them if you need training in your area. HITS is going to be pretty cooperative about the pricing for the program.

Pat Hall from Dothan spoke about the HITS Program. One of the things that the committee had looked really hard at was ways that those people in need could get help- get in touch with training until some minimum standards were in place. One thing was the different variables and means by which training can be obtained. HITS is a company that has done a program through the APCO Institute. It is a CD step based program that can be purchased from them and when completed a certificate issued. Everything comes through from the APCO Institute. It is CD Rom interactive in some ways and can be completed for those that cannot send people to a classroom environment. Quoted will be obtained on a purchase price on some kind of bulk number in case NENA and APCO and Art would like to go ahead as an organization and purchase some of those and make them available where a need exists. The other thing was a desire to implement some kind of information network that would help people that need a class whether it is NCIC or APCO. You would be able to go look at a sire and find the name of an instructor to call. By the end of August if you have not received a letter asking for some information (i.e. confirming that you are an instructor, contact information, etc.) and that you are willing to let your name be put on that list, then contact Pay Hall through NENA website with her e-mail address and let her know. Pat will try to get the letters our later in August so she can receive everyone’s input.

Homeland Security: Art stated that as soon as information was obtained on Homeland Security that it would be sent to each center. He said that the Governor was going to be setting up an office for Alabama. A director is to be appointed for Homeland Security for the state. What they talked about doing was to have a couple of people from Emergency Management, a couple from the National Guard and a couple of other agencies that had representatives that worked full-time in that office and operated out of the existing budget. He stated that there may be some from fire service that know about the last legislative session where there was a bill that would have created this office and that there was some concern about some of the language in the bill and that the bill didn’t pass. He stated that if the office was not established by the time we get that, then it would probably come in to the State Emergency Operations’s Center in Clanton. He said that Clanton was in the process of going to twenty-four hour operations in part to support this and in part to support the burning of the chemical weapons in Anniston and for CSEP. A database was taken off of the internet- off of the website that John has set up through Yahoo E-Group. He requested that everyone check their address information to make sure it was correct. He stressed the importance of this information or any other information being correct so that 9-1-1 in the State would be a part of all of this. He stated the database would be incorporated into the databases that they were setting up. He informed everyone that one of the databases would be set up to send a broadcast of mail-outs through the mail and that the other would be a computer set up to do broadcast of faxes.

Art Referred to the original bill that was in the state legislature on Homeland Defense and stated that he knew everybody had a different opinion but, the officials in Lee County 9-1-1 were of the opinion that the bill that was introduced that would have set up Homeland Defense all under the National Guard would have put all of the money into the National Guard and that we already had a State EMA that was setup to do that- that distributed money to the counties and grant departments that issues grants already. They felt like it would be a duplication and that’s why they opposed the bill the way it was written initially. Art stated that he hoped they came up with a compromise. Art said that in the past when a lot of the federal grant money came down often 9-1-1 was not included in that. He stated that 9-1-1 was not eligible to receive that unless it was under the offices of the Sheriff’s or Police Departments or if the Fire Departments would go after the grants. He said that one of the things that National NENEA, the National Association of State 9-1-1 Coordinators and National APCO have done is to try to make congress aware of the fact that if they are going to send all of this money down here and they are going to put it out there to the First Responders that those First Responders can’t do their job if we can’t answer the telephone. He said that it appeared that Congress in some of the legislation had picked up on that and they agreed with that. Art said that there was going to be a pile of money coming to this state within the next year. He stated as a matter of fact that if the supplemental appropriations for this year were passed by Congress and made it to the President then the President said that he would sign it as soon as it came to the White House. Art said that he estimated that immediately in the State of Alabama we will probably e getting somewhere in the neighborhood of about 8 million dollars to be distributed in various ways. Some of that is going to able to e asked for by 9-1-1 if it is done the way it is done on most other grants. He informed everyone that what you had to do is you had to write up a proposal or plan and submit that to your local EMA just like the fire departments do. The proposal will then be sent to the state and those monies will be distributed. He urged everyone to get on the internet and watch to see when the money comes out and try to find out how you can get it. He stated that not all of the money would come through them but, that some if it was going to come through other organizations. He said that he would watch out and try and let everyone know. He said that the state was going to try and hire someone that does nothing but watch for those grants and things like that. He encouraged those present to try and stay on top of it so they didn’t miss some money that could really help them do something in their district. He said to go to www.whitehouse.gov, that they have a whole section on terrorism and homeland security and there are some pages in there that address 9-1-1 emergency communications. It also had a list of different bills that are in Congress to appropriate money for that. He stated that there is a place in Washington that will send you updated in e-mail and he was presently trying to obtain information about this. He said that if you specify what type of grants and different things that you are interested in looking at, they’ll send you updates as they come out but, he hasn’t been able to locate that service yet.

LATA Reports: Sharon Request LATA Reports- there were no reports given.

Old Business:

Sharon Thomas informed everyone that the Alabama Chapter received a certificate for participating in the 9-1-1 Hero Program.

Proposed Bylaw Changes: Roger presented proposed bylaw changes. Five amendments were proposed. A lot of it had to do with some wording in there about the quarterly newsletter. He said that really wasn’t done so we are wording it to where “if necessary”. The other changes are going to be amendments to the officers. Making it very clear that an officer has to be an active member according to the definition that is in the bylaws. In one place, it says one thing and in another place it says another. He asked for questions then informed everyone that these changes were just for review and a ballot would be sent out to be voted on. A suggestion was made about having John post the bylaws on the website for those who weren’t there.

New Business:

President Sharon Thomas stated that she had been invited to attend the Georgia Conference and that the Executive Board had approved $200.00 for her to attend that conference from September 30, 2002 through October 3, 2002 at Calloway Gardens. She stated that she represented Alabama at the conference. She said that the Georgia President would be attending the Alabama Conference and hoped everyone would make him welcome.

It was stated that the Executive Board met and appointed Mr. George Williams of Mobile County to serve the rest of the term for the Mobile LATA.

The Immediate Past President stated that it was his privilege to be the head of the nominating committee. He names those serving on that committee with him as follows: Ray Preston, Max Armstrong, Art Faulker, and Larry Williams. He said this year on the slate to be presented were Roger Humphries as the candidate for President, Pat Hall as the candidate for Montgomery LATA Vice President, Richard Holt for Huntsville LATA Vice President, and Bill Brodeur for Past President Vice President. He stated his opinion that it was an outstanding slate. He then asked for other nominations from the floor.

President Sharon Thomas requested nominations for President. A nomination was made to close the nominations. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

President Sharon Thomas requested nominations for the Montgomery LATA. A nomination was made to close the nominations. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

President Sharon Thomas requested nominations for the Huntsville LATA. A nomination was made to close the nominations. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

President Sharon Thomas requested nominations for Past President Vice President. A nomination was made to close the nominations. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

The Chair of the Nominating Committee made a motion that the slate be approved by acclamation. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

President Thomas asked that the Officers stand..

Tariff Filing: President Thomas stated that Ray Preston wanted to talk about the Tariff filing. Ray told everyone that we wanted to full in on where BellSouth was on tariff filing for Wireless Phase II. He stated that BellSouth had prepared a statement of readiness for Wireless Phase II and that he had about 20-25 copies of the letters for anyone that wanted one. He said that the letter stated that BellSouth would be ready to interconnect with wireless carriers for Phase II effective August 1st. He informed everyone that it was still in the testing phase. He said that in the letter there was a reference to a charge (a proposed charge) to the PSAPs for conversion of the ALI circuits to extend ALI. He stated that on a PSAP by PSAP basis they would be able to take requests from the districts to add the x-y coordinate into the ALI data stream that everyone was getting on their existing ALI circuits. The cost that was estimated in the letter would be $2,200 one time per PSAP. He said that there had been a tariff filed and he appreciated Roger for checking the tariff website and finding that there had been one filed. He stated that he had not been notified. He said it was filed on July 11th and at this time he didn’t have any information about further requests and wireless cost recovery. He said that all he could tell right now was that today it didn’t look like they were going to ask for anything more. He said that he couldn’t tell what tomorrow was going to look like but, as soon as tomorrow got her and he found out that he would post us. He informed everyone that the website that roger was on could be accessed by the public.

Art Faulkner replied to Ray Preston that there had been a request made by the PSC for a letter to be sent to them so they would knows what out stance was on this issue. He stated that back in May during the first meeting with BellSouth on this that we made it pretty clear to them that what they proposed would not fly in Alabama and that we would fight them as hard as we could in the PSC. He said he felt like they went back and reconsidered and if this was what they were asking for from us then we had won. He stated that he thought what we needed to do was for those who wanted to write a letter to the PSC and let them know that we supported this because those who wanted to write a letter to the PSC and let them know that we supported this because we have had to fight BellSouth a lot in the past at PSC. Art said that BellSouth agreed with us after the last fight that they would come sit down at the table with us and try to work it out before they took it to the PSC and they kept their word. He expressed his opinion that he thought we had won if this was the only thing that they tried to propose and that they were not proposing anything more or less here than they were in any of their other nine states. He said they have filed the same tariff in the other eight states and $2,200.00 is a win for us because they were talking about charging us on a per wireless call basis and tariffing that out. He stated that in Elmore County they were looking at being out a good bit of money and that they let them know that a lot of counties couldn’t afford it.

Bill Brodeur questioned Ray regarding Etowah County’s two PSAPs. He asked if wireless calls were only received at one PSAP would Etowah County still pay for both PSAPs. Ray said that it was done on a ALI circuit by ALI circuit basis so, if Etowah County wanted x-y delivered to both PSAPs then there would be a charge for both. Ray informed everyone that to transfer the x-y to a back-up or secondary PSAP then that PSAP would have to be enabled. Bill said that some of Etowah’s neighboring counties had in-house databases as far as wire line and that they didn’t have to have drops for wireless and asked if that PSAP transferred Etowah County a wireless caller would latitude and longitude be received. Ray stated that they do have ALI circuits. He said that all of the sires that BellSouth supports in Alabama who operate a true onsite stand along database have ALI circuits for delivery of Wireless Phase I. He assured all present that when a call was transferred to their PSAP, even if the transferring PSAP didn’t have extended ALI enables at their center, that the PSAP transferred to (that had extended ALI) would receive the information that was not received by the transferring PSAP initially. Ray said the programming would be done in the data host in Birmingham and Nashville to insert the x-y on a circuit by circuit basis.

FCC: Ray addresses an issue that he said the FCC had dictated to all the telephone companies in the United States. He said that by August 11th in every service area the digits 9-1-1 would be turned on so that they would ring to some place where a voice would answer. He stated they were not mandating enhancing 9-1-1 or even basic 9-1-1 but, that’s what the equivalent was. He informed everyone that there were still a few areas within the state where the exchanges overlapped in counties and where the primary exchange had enhanced 9-1-1 and the adjoining county didn’t have any type of 9-1-1 service and those subscribers had to be pointed to an intercept announcement. He said that there were still one or two exchanges in Alabama that didn’t have any type of 9-1-1. But by August 11th, BellSouth would have every wireline subscriber they have pointed to the digits 9-1-1. He stated they were working with Coosa County, Green County and Perry County on where to send their calls.

For The Good of The Association: Bill Brodeur said that Alabama NENA’s display was in bad shape and he recommended that an additional display e purchased.

A motion was made to purchase a display and possibly a loaner display not to exceed $5,000.00. The motion was seconded and carried unanimously.

Bill Brodeur stated that a questionnaire may be given out at the conference this year to consider holding the conference at Point Clear in 2004.

Bill Meadows thanked those who were responsible for being able to hold the meeting there.

A motion was made to dismiss. The motion as seconded and carried unanimously.

Signed, Bill Brodeur

© 2008 Alabama Chapter of NENA - All rights reserved, US, International, and Intergalactic
www.al911.org