All’s quiet on the telephone front

Mathis Winkler

NEWPORT BEACH -- The first time his telephone went dead during a

conversation with City Atty. Bob Burnham, Councilman John Heffernan

didn’t give it much thought.

But when Heffernan was cut off a second time while on the phone with

Burnham, he decided to ask city officials to check out the city’s phone

system and figure out what wasn’t working.

“Maybe it’s a recurring thing,” Heffernan said Tuesday. “We’ve got to

have phone service.”

City Manager Homer Bludau, who looked into the matter, said an

unreliable power supply had caused conversations to break up

unintentionally.

“Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t,” Bludau said, adding

that the problem had been corrected.

While Heffernan said he’d been getting clear phone connections in

recent days, he said replacing the 15-year-old system might still be

necessary.

“I don’t know whether it’s time to upgrade it or tear the whole thing

out,” he said.

Bludau agreed that city officials might consider switching to a better

phone system in the future.

But “while there are better systems that are state-of-the-art, ours is

still a good basic system,” he said. “We shouldn’t have that problem

anymore.”

To test it, Bludau may be reached at (949) 644-3000.