Bonner County Adds Fee For 911 System

GTE customers in Bonner County will see a new $1 charge on their bills this month to pay for a voter-approved 911 system.

There currently is no county-wide 911 system with a central dispatcher. Last fall, residents overwhelmingly voted to pay $12 a year to build and operate the new emergency system.

The new fee will start showing up on telephone bills later this month. GTE will turn over the money to the county.

Residents also will be seeing a new telephone prefix in the Sandpoint area because of growth. New telephone customers will be assigned a 255 prefix, which will make 10,000 new numbers available.

Businesses with their own telecommunications systems should reprogram them to accept the new prefix, said GTE spokesman John Dennington.

“If a business system isn’t updated it won’t recognize a 255 number and may block the call from going through,” he said. , DataTimes