If

you've been paying a charge for 911 service on

your cellular phone bill, you may be due a

refund.

Fayette

County commissioners passed a resolution in 1999

approving a fee of $1 per phone per month to be

added to cell phone bills to help pay for

enhancements to the 911 system, but there have

been glitches and the county is not yet

collecting the fees.

But

at least one cell phone company has been charging

its customers based on the county's resolution,

according to county officials.

The

money is intended to help pay for equipment that

would enable 911 dispatchers to trace the exact

location of a call from a cell phone.

That

sort of technology would have come in handy last

year when a young Fayette mother, Esther Green,

was car-jacked and managed to dial 911 on her

cell phone. Green kept the connection open and

directed officers to her location without

alerting her attacker, but officials say the new

equipment would have taken the guesswork out of

the situation.

Green

is to be honored today by the CTIA Wireless

Foundation for her quick thinking in the

incident.

Calls

like Green's, from wireless phones, make up about

28 percent of the call volume at Fayette County's

911 center, said director Cheryl Rogers.

"That goes up significantly when there's an

accident," Rogers told a group of Fayette

officials during a joint city/county planning

meeting recently.

Some

time after Fayette approved its resolution, the

state attorney general gave the legal opinion

that money from cell phone charges can't be

collected until Fayette's cities approve

resolutions similar to the county's, Rogers said.

City

and county leaders told Rogers to compile all the

necessary information so the city councils can

put the matter on their agendas. She did so last

week.

Once

all the resolutions are passed, then Fayette and

its cities will have to enter into contracts with

each wireless phone provider to both collect the

fees and purchase equipment on their end to make

the calls traceable. The fees will be used to pay

for both the equipment for the 911 center and the

equipment for the cell phone companies, said

Rogers.

As

for fees that were collected in error, Rogers

said she is unsure whether the county will be

able to go ahead and use the funds, or whether

they should be refunded to the customers.

"If I were them, I'd contact the company and

ask for a refund," she said.

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