Misplaced decimal point means Oregon county's 911 system could be out millions

[TexasTowelie]

Columbia County’s 911 agency has learned the hard way that an errant decimal point can make an enormous difference.

The Columbia 9-1-1 Communications District -- the agency that fields emergency calls in the 52,000-person county -- asked voters in May to approve an operations levy taxing property owners “.29 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.”

The agency meant to ask for “29 cents” per $1,000.

Now, the agency is stuck with a tax rate that’s 1/100th of what was intended.

Nearly 74 percent of voters approved the levy, at the lower rate, just a fraction of a penny.

Read more: https://www.oregonlive.com/news/2019/06/misplaced-decimal-point-means-oregon-countys-911-system-could-be-out-millions.html

Isn't anyone checking the paperwork to catch these mistakes?

As for the people who are opposed to properly funding the 911 system, perhaps they should be put on the black list for responses by entities covered by 911.

[marylandblue]

1. I really should have paid more attention in 4th grade math.

I just thought I never would actually use that stuff.

[TexasTowelie]

2. So if I ever become a cashier at the dollar store,

you are the person that I should charge $100 instead? (I'm joking, of course). Placing the decimal point in the proper position is extremely important.

Don't feel bad though, when I worked at the insurance department we had an exhibit that we were about to publish the aggregate data for release. The data in the exhibit was supposed to be rounded to the nearest thousand dollars. The exhibit went through the chief actuary and my supervisor's hands before they asked me to check and I noticed that they were going to report the amount of premiums in the state of Texas as $9 trillion (about equal to the U.S. GDP) instead of $9 billion. Big oops! The exhibit didn't get published until four months later as they had to get the programmer to review the data and programming. Despite the fact that each of us had degrees in mathematics, it figures that the person at the bottom of the totem pole is the person that finds the errors and keeps the management from looking like fools.