Assistant Chief Chris Cole said the dispatchers on the day shift are particularly busy.

On July 19, 2007, the department experienced problems receiving calls from the public. Since then the system has failed twice, first in September and again in November.

Most people calling the department’s non-emergency phone line don’t have an emergency, but some do. Cole said many people memorize the 584-1800 number and instinctively call it. He added that a lot of the elderly population is familiar with it too.

“We’ve had people tell us they were calling for hours. We didn’t find out about the problem for several hours after the incident occurred,” Cole said. “All it’s going to take is one person who can’t get through and has an emergency. That’s our concern.”

Cole said he is part of a committee that also consists of the mayor’s office, the department of public safety and the City’s risk and safety manager. They are scheduled to talk about immediate solutions for the problem at a meeting on Monday.

Mayor Scott Johnson, who took office back in January, said the problem wasn’t even brought to his attention until a Public Safety Committee meeting on Feb. 12. He believes better communication needs to occur between the departments in City Council.

Johnson said City Hall’s phone system, which is separate from that of the police station, needs to be replaced as well. He supports a comprehensive plan that would update both systems and potentially be more cost effective.

“There’s no desire to put the public at risk,” Johnson said. “We are acting as quickly as we can to address the situation.”

Johnson stressed that he didn’t want to cause a panic in the city over this issue. He called the previous phone problems “isolated incidents” and said 911 still works.

Public Safety Commissioner Ron Kim said the equipment is outdated and the service provider can’t locate the cause of the problem. During each of the incidents, incoming calls weren’t coming through, but calls from the police station weren’t affected.

“We wanted to make sure the public was aware of the situation. We don’t have any control over this. We don’t even know when it’s happening since the phones don’t go dead,” Kim said.

Kim believes resolving this problem fast is a higher priority than addressing the City Hall phone system at this time. He said people need to be able to get in touch with the police when they’re in need of help.

If the committee doesn’t make any progress in the next week to identify a solution and move forward, then Kim said he’ll go out and bid vendors to solve the problem. Kim has been talking to vendors for the last few months, and said one of the options would actually even save money over using the current phone system.

“We just don’t feel we can wait forever,” Kim said.