By guest columnist Kelly McKinney – Richmond in Depth
Since letters about the 911 fee that will for the first time be added to property tax bills began hitting their mailboxes in June, Madison Countians have raised concerns.
Some of those have involved errors in the data used to calculate the fees. Others have been about the perceived fairness of the fee structure.
Adam Arvin said at Monday’s meeting of the Madison County Fiscal Court that his assessed fee on his commercial property in Richmond is just over $1,000, which he said will take up almost three months of the rent he is bringing in from the property.
“I’m good for trying to help and give my part to 911, but there ought to be a place where this is balanced out a little bit better, than throwing it all at one person,” he said.
Madison County resident Dean Vencill said he is “for the fee,” but that he has family members who own commercial property that have fees that are “out of this world.”
“How are they going to absorb that?” he said. “They were very upset with the amount, $1,500 bills, $1,700 bills on commercial property.”
Social media posts have been filled with similar comments.
What is the fee?
As Richmond In-Depth reported in February, Madison Countians will for the first time pay fees for 911 services through their property tax bills. Fee amounts are based on property type and—for many property types—square footage.
The “land use fee,” as it is coined in the county budget, is expected to bring in about $4.28 million for 911 operations.
How the fee was developed
Madison County isn’t alone in having to develop a new way to fund 911.
For decades, 911 fees have been paid via a fee placed on landline telephone services. But funding brought in from that fee has dwindled drastically. In 2024, 78.7% of adults and 86.9% of children in the U.S. lived in homes with wireless-only telephone service. Contrast that with 2010, when only about 30% of households were wireless only.
Local governments across Kentucky have implemented various funding mechanisms for 911 service.
“It’s affecting everybody across the state, and everybody’s dealing with it a little bit differently,” Madison County 911 Director Wendy Lynch said.
Many governments in Kentucky have placed a fee on water bills and some, like Madison County, have added fees to property bills.
In Madison County, because the land use fee will replace the fee on landlines, county officials have framed it as a reworking of the 911 fee, rather than a novel charge.
“This is not a new fee,” Madison County Deputy Judge-Executive Jill Williams said at Monday’s meeting. “This is really an update to the fee structure.”
Williams said officials in Madison County hadn’t yet developed a new avenue to fund the service because 911 services had received substantial federal funding through the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program. Now that the chemicals at the Blue Grass Army Depot have been destroyed, that funding will no longer be received.
But conversations about 911 funding in the face of dwindling landline usage and the knowledge that CSEPP funding would at some point go away started as far back as 2008, and the post-CSEPP task force was formed in 2023, Williams said.
The task force looked at several avenues for funding, including fees on utility bills and a flat rate fee on property. The task force had also proposed a $75 fee per main entrance on properties.
However, these options were rejected.
If fees were placed on utility bills, the relevant utility company would charge an administrative fee, Williams said.
A flat rate would not be “equitable,” Williams said Monday, stating that larger properties are likely to house more people, and that larger commercial properties generally have more foot traffic.
“The structure needs to account for those factors,” she said.
An across-the-board flat fee would be $103 per parcel, Williams said.
For single-family homes, only those that are 6,400 or so square feet or larger will pay that amount or more under the square-footage based model. Most single-family homeowners will pay much less. Owners of multi-family units, however, will pay more than that amount at 1,600 square feet or more.
Business owners whose commercial property is 845 square feet or more will pay more than $103.
A breakdown of the amount of the fee per square foot for each property type can be found here.
Fee structure apparently unique to Madison County
Though some other counties in Kentucky have decided to fund 911 through fees on property bills, none seem to use the same structure as Madison County’s.
At Monday’s meeting, Williams cited McCracken County’s 911 fee as being similar. However, there are some differences.
According to the McCracken County ordinance, residential units are charged a flat rate of $45. Commercial units are charged on a scale from $210 to $1,550, with the largest fee of $1,550 applying to commercial property that is 25,000 square feet or more.
Under Madison County’s fee structure, there is no cap on the fee for commercial units. A 25,000 square-foot commercial property will be charged just over $3,000, according to the formula.
Perhaps an even bigger difference is the treatment of non-profits and religious organizations. In McCracken County, these entities pay a flat fee of $35. Under Madison County’s structure, they are treated the same as commercial properties.
Kenton County’s fees work similarly, but with generally higher fees. Under its fee structure, non-profits are treated as commercial properties while buildings used for religious worship are classified in the same category as government property and charged a flat fee of $70. It caps fees on commercial property at $2,380.
Both counties’ fee structures also treat educational institutions differently than Madison County’s. In Kenton County, schools are treated the same as commercial properties. In McCracken County, they are treated as public use and have a flat fee of $35. In Madison County, educational institutions have been charged a percentage of the total portion of the 911 budget not funded from sources other than the land use fee.
As Richmond In-Depth reported in February, Madison County Schools will pay the most, at 3.24%. Based on the $4.28 million budgeted for the land use fee, the district’s fee will total about $138,000. Berea Independent will be charged about $9,800. The fees for Eastern Kentucky University and Berea College should be about $43,000 and $19,000, respectively.
County extends appeal deadline
Madison Countians have been given more time to contest the amount of their fees.
The county has extended the deadline until July 11 for appeals, and county officials have said that deadline can be further extended.
That date had been set at June 30, giving residents little time to complete the process.
Giving residents a short time frame was done to prevent people reaching out with issues at the last minute, Madison County Judge-Executive Reagan Taylor said during Monday’s fiscal court meeting.
“We wanted it to be a sense of urgency,” he said. “We wanted to get people’s attention so that we can make sure that this information, obviously, was correct.”
About 3,200 appeals had been processed as of Monday morning, Williams said.
County pulled wrong square footage totals from PVA office; some zoning conflicts with use
The two biggest drivers of appeals and calls to county officials have stemmed from discrepancies in square footage and zoning classifications, Williams said.
The 911 fee should be assessed according to improved square footage, but officials erroneously pulled the total square footage of properties from the PVA’s office, Williams said. That has been corrected for all parcels in the county.
Improved square footage includes all finished spaces, including areas such as garages.
Some zoning discrepancies have occurred because of single-family homes located in areas that are zoned as a planned unit development or as multi-family, for example. Also, some areas containing multi-family housing still carry a B-3 business zone, as the B-3 classification at one time was the proper zoning for multi-family units in the City of Richmond.
As appeals have come in, officials have been correcting zoning classifications for the 911 system, Williams said.
“Getting this data correct also helps our first responders,” Williams said. “It is a good thing to clean up your data.”
Appeals are also being processed for those who still have landline phones and for people who own contiguous properties, as Richmond In-Depth reported in June.
The link to submit an appeal can be found here.
Williams says local offices have been helping residents with appeals
Residents have been finding help with filing appeals at the fiscal court office, at 135 W. Irvine St. in Richmond, as well as the county emergency operations center at 560 S. Keeneland Drive, Williams said.
Some have also been assisted by employees at the Madison County Public Library.
Williams said residents are welcome to come to the fiscal court for assistance.
State fee on cell phone bills funds just a fraction of 911 costs, officials say
Some residents have questioned why they are required to pay a land use fee given that a 911 fee is placed on their cell phone bills.
The fee, 70 cents per month per line on billed cell phone service, is collected by the Kentucky 911 Services Board. Prepaid cell phone users pay a fee of 93 cents when they purchase a prepaid cell phone or a card. A portion of that funding is then distributed to 911 centers across the state, with some other funding available in the form of grants, according to information from the Kentucky 911 Services Board.
Lynch said Madison County 911 typically receives about $350,000 each year from that fund. (The recently approved 2026 fiscal year budget estimates $450,000 will come from cell phone fees).
The 2025 fiscal year budget for 911 is more than $5.4 million.
The funding from cell phone fees is limited to expenses including personnel, training, and GIS costs, Lynch said.
What happens now?
Magistrates indicated Monday that they are not inclined to make any changes to the already approved fee structure.
“I see the work that our team has done; they’ve done a great job,” Magistrate Brian Combs said. “I don’t see any reason to change it.”
Magistrate Stephen Lochmueller said he agreed.
“It’s in place,” he said. “I’m comfortable with moving forward.”
Magistrate Tom Botkin pointed to resolutions approved by the Richmond City Commission and Berea City Council approving the fee structure and interlocal agreement governing 911 operations.
“All the governments were involved,” he said. “The bottom line is, we still have to pay for 911 services.”
As of now, appeals are due by July 11.
The fees will be on property tax bills in October.
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