Mid-Valley Sunday

ALBANY -- Albany city officials don't know why a temporary power outage at City Hall would have affected telephone lines at the Albany Police Department, but that appears to be what happened Saturday morning.

The outage did not affect emergency 911 calls.

Phone lines were out from about five hours Saturday at the police department, forcing dispatchers to take calls at the central dispatch center across the parking lot at the Linn County Sheriff's Office.

City spokeswoman Marilyn Smith said the computer room at City Hall is being enlarged, which required crews to move a breaker panel and cut power. The emergency generator didn't kick on right away and the phone system went down.

The system was down from 7:50 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., she said. When it came back up, all but one part of the phone system worked normally, Smith said.

The part that didn't work affects the police department's business phones. Verizon, the city's phone service provider, had to restart that system manually, Smith said.

However, she said, the business phones are not supposed to be connected to the dispatch lines at the police department, so Verizon is coming out again on Monday to investigate.

"They don't know what happened and I don't know what happened and neither do the folks downtown," Smith said.