County 911 system is online again

Saturday outage left the emergency system offline for 9 minutes; no cause has been determined yet

What officials do know is that an emergency operations employee tried calling out of the center a few minutes later and could not. By 11:32, the backup for both 911 and nonemergency calls had been manually activated. At 2:45 p.m. the calls were transferred to the emergency call center in Rockville.

‘‘We know that if someone was trying to call 911 between [11:23 a.m. and 11:32 a.m.] they would have gotten a busy signal,” Baur said, but no one has contacted the police about not getting a response.

County officials are working with Verizon, which maintains the county’s system, to determine a cause. Company spokeswoman Christine M. Reap said the Gaithersburg center experienced problems with its on-site switching equipment, which caused an automatic reboot.

Reap said the outage in Gaithersburg does not happen frequently, but it is not uncommon.

‘‘What I have been told is that this is the most severe outage what we have ever experienced,” Baur said. ‘‘We could have transferred the service back [to the primary center in Gaithersburg] before, but wanted to give the technicians ample time to guarantee that it wouldn’t happen again.

Clarksburg tax districts

In an upended day of business, the County Council began its Tuesday session with a two-hour committee meeting on the Clarksburg Development District report. The report, completed by council staff last week, found that the use of the special taxing districts in the Clarksburg area was legal to repay developers for improvements such as roads, schools and libraries.

Tuesday’s committee session, again with council staff, was a question-and-answer session that delved into policy issues, including how the districts were created and county oversight of the projects.

‘‘It’s clear after today that developers get their money either way [from residents or from permission to build extra units],” said Councilman Marc Elrich (D-At large) of Takoma Park, who said current development district policies ‘‘make county government the bad guy.”

Also in attendance Tuesday were Clarksburg residents — who have signed on to participate in a possible lawsuit against the county —holding yellow miniature flags with the slogan, ‘‘Don’t Tread on Clarksburg.”

‘‘I think [the council] is dancing around the fundamental question: Are the taxpayers going to sweeten the profits of the developer?” said Tim DeArros, vice president of the Clarksburg Civic Association.

Before the report’s publication, a group of Clarksburg residents argued that the districts could cost property owners $1,500 a year over 30 years, that payment for the infrastructure was the developers’ responsibility and that property owners were not adequately informed about the districts when they purchased their homes.

A law authorizing the county to create special taxing districts requires the consent of 80 percent of property owners. The consent was sought when the area included only one property owner and most of the land still belonged to developers. County officials said the law does not require the consent to be reconsidered as more people buy property.

Of the three planned taxing districts in the Clarksburg area, one for Clarksburg Town Center has been approved, but no bonds have been issued yet. Ownership of the Town Center property has changed hands, stalling the process and any requests for the council to issue the bonds. Two other districts have been put on hold.

‘‘I think the first issue is where do we stand with the Clarksburg Town Center. Does it make sense to implement the district with these outstanding policy questions?” said Councilman Michael J. Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown, whose district includes Clarksburg. ‘‘The practicality is that you have lots of people in Clarksburg sitting and waiting.”