Commissioners split on raise to $52 per hour for director of 911 dispatch center

MANTI—A request for an $18-plus per hour pay raise for the director of the Sanpete County 911 dispatch center culminated in 2-1 split vote at the last county commission meeting, with Commissioners Mike Bennett and Jim Cheney favoring the raise, but Commissioner Scott Barthomew voting “no.”

The action at a meeting Tuesday, Sept. 16 raises pay for Neil Johnson, director of what is now known as the Public Safety Answering point (PSAP) from $34.42 to $52.65 per hour. At 40 hours per week and 52 weeks per year, the vote brings Johnson’s annual pay, not counting benefits, to $109,512.

“I’m not saying Neil doesn’t deserve it,” Bartholomew said. “Neil’s a great guy. But I’m saying a $20 an hour pay raise all at once is very extreme.” (The raise is actually $1.78 short of $20.)

In introducing the request, Sheriff Jared Buchanan said, “We’ve asked a lot of Neil in the past few years, and we continue to ask more of him,” primarily for work on high-tech systems related to dispatch.

The sheriff said the state has mandated that all PSAPs adopt a computer-aided dispatch system or CAD and be capable of going “CAD to CAD with other PSAP centers in Utah.”

Implementing the CAD system requires a lot of extra work, Buchanan said, including coming up with more money. “Neil’s in the process of building that up.”

The dispatch center also has a mandate to develop a Geographic Information System (GIS), the sheriff said. In police work, GIS systems are used to generate online maps identifying where incidents are occurring.

“We have to do GIS, not for the county (we still need it for the county),” the sheriff said. “We have to have a GIS string for the CAD.”

Buchanan said many counties hire a GIS specialist to do the work. “Neil said he could pick it up,” but Buchanan said Johnson told him that “at the current wage, it’s not worth it,”

The sheriff’s and Johnson’s main rationale for the increase was that the $52-plus an hour is in line with what other PSAP administrators around Utah are earning. Buchanan said he spent almost 40 hours researching PSAP pay around the state.

“I actually went pretty conservative on what should have been implemented so we could justify it to the people,” he said.

“You’ve got to look at this as paying the position, not the person,” Buchanan said.

Bartholomew responded, “This isn’t the place to discuss pay scales. That should be discussed in another meeting,” assumedly when pay scales in general are being considered.

In other discussion, the commission approved a Sheriff’s Office request to purchase of a 2026 F-350 Ford pickup for $50,460 from Murdock Ford, which has dealerships in Provo and Payson.

The Ford website describes the truck as a “super duty” diesel model capable towing up to 40,000 pounds. Buchanan said he planned to station the truck in the north county to support emergency management and hazardous materials incidents, and in the winter, to tow a trailer carrying snow cats.

The purchase will be financed from a U.S. Department of Homeland Security grant, up to $10,000 in Search-and-Rescue funds, and with $6,000 from trading in a 25-year-old F-250 owned by the Sheriff’s Office.

The commission also a payment of $81,502 to Mountain Land Supply, a Utah County company that outfits patrol vehicles with lights, sirens, radios and radar.

On another topic, the commission also talked about the county road district’s project to upgrade about 1.5 miles of Sugar Factory Lane in the Gunnison Valley area. The work will add a road across a county bridge, built a few years ago, that crosses the Sanpitch River.

A farm owner in the area asked for an easement to put a casing along the road segment with the goal of putting in a pressurized irrigation line in the future. And David Madsen of Madsen Excavation, who is doing work for utility companies, asked for permission to create a trench for future power and communication lines.

Garrick Willden of Jones and DeMille Engineering and the engineer for the road project, told the commission, “The asphalt is being ripped up right now, so it’s a good time to get utilities underneath the road so we don’t have to cut the new asphalt in the future.”

The commission approved both right-of-way requests.

Finally, two residents, Susan Manning and Zo Zsembery, renewed a request for a regular public comment period at commission meetings, where citizens can speak without giving prior notice. Currently, citizens must call the county clerk’s office several days before a meeting and ask to be put on the agenda.

Commissioners tabled the policy change until January after a new commissioner is sworn in.

Finally, Brent Crosby, owner of a KOA campground, asked the commission to submit his proposed language related to access routes in the Pine Cree area to the county attorney and the Sanpete County Planning Commission.

The commission agreed to submit Crosby’s proposal to the planning commission. But commissioners also said discussion with land owners about a second road is underway, and road issues would not retroactively affect Heritage Hills incorporation process.