Twin Falls County will likely still pick up most of the tab for dispatch services for Kimberly this year as the city phases fees for the Southern Idaho Regional Communications Center into its budget.

SIRCOMM’s governing Joint Powers Board agreed 2-0 on Monday to bill Twin Falls County for $20,233 in unpaid dues from various taxing districts, money the county has chipped in for years. Lincoln County Commissioner Charlie Ritter and Gooding County Commissioner Tom Faulkner were the only voting members.

The four-member board is made up of one county commissioner each from Gooding, Jerome, Lincoln and Twin Falls counties. Twin Falls County Com-missioner Tom Mikesell, also chairman of the SIRCOMM board, abstained from the vote; Jerome County Commissioner Charlie Howell was absent.

This year’s bill is $9,000 less than what the county paid last year. Roughly $15,000 is money owed by Kimberly, Mikesell said.

Twin Falls commissioners have been willing to cover the costs in the past in the name of public safety. But this year’s bill wasn’t budgeted for on the county level, Mikesell said, and he wasn’t sure Monday if his fellow commissioners would agree to pay the sum.

The SIRCOMM board then voted 3-0 to approve a formal resolution adopting its 2009-10 budget, a step Mikesell said was inadvertently skipped in September. Auditors currently reviewing SIRCOMM’s books caught the mistake, he said. The new fiscal year began Oct. 1.

Later in the meeting, board members voted 3-0 to place audio recordings of their meetings on SIRCOMM’s Web site, www.sircomm.com. In proposing the idea, Mikesell noted that the information is already public record but that providing audio up front might cut down the costs of people requesting written verbatim minutes. Board meetings are already recorded on audiotape.

“It’s extremely important to me that we’re as transparent as possible,” he said.

The board heard a number of reports from various committees and center Director John Moore. Communications technician Jerry Gonterman told board members that the dispatch center’s radio systems are working well at the moment. A mobile repeater placed in the southeast corner of Lincoln County seems to have solved a long-running coverage issue there, he said when asked by Lincoln County Sheriff Kevin Ellis how communications were during an incident near Kimama last week.

The Joint Powers Board will not meet again until after Jan. 1, after members decided to delay a previously scheduled Dec. 14 meeting.