There were more questions than answers as Muskogee County Commissioners held a special meeting Wednesday afternoon to discuss the county E911 system approved by voters Nov. 4.

The tax becomes effective two months after the passage, commissioners learned.

Muskogee Police Chief Rex Eskridge said it is his understanding AT&T will collect the fees, both from its customers and from Cross Telephone Co. and Windstream, which also have telephone lines in Muskogee County.

No one seemed certain who would collect the 50-cent per cell phone tax.

Interim City Attorney Roy Tucker has been in conversation with District Attorney Larry Moore to set up the city-county trust authority that will oversee the establishment of the system, said City Manager Greg Buckley.

The authority will choose a location for the facility, the equipment and make other decisions, Buckley said.

“That’s the easy part,” he said. “The hard part is going to be the personnel issues.”

Dispatchers in the new center will be authority employees, not city, county or any of the police or fire departments, Buckley said. The dispatchers now working have different pay scales, retirement programs and other benefits that will have to be meshed into a new program.

Officials also talked at length about the possibility of converting all the county’s emergency personnel to one radio system.

An 800 megahertz radio system would link all the county agencies but would cost $6 million to $8 million.

John Loyd, U.S. marshal, said the need for a single system becomes apparent when agencies work together on serving arrest warrants. Last year, the government’s Operation Falcon involved 26 agencies working together, and few of them were unable to talk to one another by radio. They were forced to use cell phones.

“And when you’re driving down the highway at 80 mph, that’s not a very good thing,” he said.

The agencies have agreed to work together on making application to the state Homeland Security for grants to help with buying a new system. No 911 funds may be used to acquire the system, said District 2 Commissioner Gene Wallace.