Two excerpts of Wednesday stories that taken together simply leave your head shaking.

First, from an Indiana Chamber release the day after its Letters to Our Leaders project debuted with an initial focus on local government efficiency:

Last winter, the first responders on the scene of a van in a Hamilton County retention pond weren’t a critically needed dive team. Instead, it reportedly took three 911 calls for that emergency crew to arrive. Tragically, four people lost their lives when public safety improvements might have made all the difference.

The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette was one of many media outlets covering the campaign to place a focus on important public policy issues. A separate story in the same newspaper about opposition to a plan to merge city, county and the nearby New Haven emergency call centers included the following:

The issue of merged 911 centers has been an ongoing discussion for years between Fort Wayne and Allen County, as the two call centers are housed in the same room of the City-County Building basement separated by a glass wall. Councilman Tim Pape, D-5th, said the issue has been the most frustrating topic for him. … He said even if there were no cost savings, having a unified dispatch center makes sense because it improves safety.

The Chamber’s local government efficiency letter and below is the video; the story from Fort Wayne.

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