PIERRE, S.D. – A South Dakota board overseeing the 911 emergency system approved a plan Thursday to create a grant program helping call centers pay for technology upgrades. The program is possible because of an increase to the state’s 911 surcharge lawmakers approved in recent years, board members said.
The monthly, per-line charge applies to landline and cellphone service, and is used to help local governments fund their 911 call centers. Legislators and then-Gov. Kristi Noem adopted a 75-cent increase in the surcharge last year, from $1.25 to $2. Lawmakers and Gov. Larry Rhoden made the increase permanent this year.
Before last year, lawmakers had not increased the surcharge since 2012, and it was supporting only 30% of local call centers’ operational costs while local governments funded the rest, said Jason Husby, the state’s 911 coordinator. He told board members the increased surcharge is covering about 45% of those costs.
Seventy percent of revenue from the surcharge is remitted to the local agency where the surcharge was collected, and 30% is deposited into the 911 coordination fund overseen by the state Department of Public Safety.
The increase raised the state’s surcharge revenue from $2.8 million in fiscal year 2024 to $3.1 million in fiscal year 2025. Husby told board members that some of those extra funds can go toward creating a continuous grant program for 911 call centers to make necessary improvements. Considering other costs paid by the coordination fund, he said it’ll leave about $80,000 a month to use for call center grants.
South Dakota is ahead of other states regarding its 911 infrastructure, Husby said. The state set up redundancies in case a call center is offline or overwhelmed, rerouting incoming calls to the nearest dispatcher. That redundancy was used during statewide 911 outages in April and July last year.
The next step is to extend that redundancy and coordination to emergency responders through improved radio networks. The improvement was recommended in the state’s 911 efficiency study, published in January.
Board member and Watertown Police Chief Tim Toomey said the surcharge increase was a “lifesaver” for his local 911 call center. The agency was “hundreds of thousands of dollars in a deficit,” and the surcharge increase for the locality is filling in the gap.
But technology replacement costs, such as radio equipment, are “staggering” to the point “that our city cannot even fathom a budget for that,” Toomey said, requiring additional support.
The grants can also be used to facilitate consolidation among several call centers currently discussing the matter, Husby said.
“There are upfront costs if County A and County B want to combine, and I would hate for those upfront costs to dissuade what would be an eventual efficiency,” Husby said. “To me, that’s where I see the board come in to fund and review the cost to move radios, technology and all the things together. We can help those governments and, in the end, they’re becoming more efficient.”
The board unanimously approved of the grant program. Husby hopes to move the program forward quickly to assist call centers “in desperate need” of radio updates. He said he’ll provide a more detailed plan at the board’s next meeting in June.
