Phone company to Ventnor: Don’t call us. You can’t.

VENTNOR, N.J. - The municipal government of this Jersey Shore town was temporarily unavailable today. At least by telephone.

In this age of extreme dependency on phones, faxes, cell phones, iPhones, email, and the myriad of other ways humans find to communicate, doing business with the City of Ventnor in any other way besides in person was impossible for two-and-a-half hours this morning.

The city's telephone service provider shut off service for non-payment.

But it wasn't because the city forgot to pay its phone bill for three months that ACC Business, a division of ATT, which provides local and long distance phone service to the city, cut them off, according to municipal administrator Andrew J. McCrosson Jr.

The city had refused to pay a new monthly minimum charge to the company after a previous three-year contract expired in October, putting them on the delinquent list.

But the shut-off was an unexpected glitch which apparently occurred because the utility was unaware that its customer was a municipal government, McCrosson said.

"Even though the bills say City of Ventnor on them, they said they didn't know that we are a local government and if they had, they never would have shut us off," McCrosson said.

McCrosson said that over the course of the past year or so the city, which currently spends about $25,000 a year on the service, has dramatically cut its phone costs by implementing new employee procedures and installing a new phone system. When the old contract expired, the city wanted to continue to see that savings reflected in its monthly bill, he said.

"Instead they wanted us to sign a new contract that called for a minimum amount to be paid monthly which we believed would be higher than we are actually currently spending," McCrosson said. "We're not happy with that arrangement so we didn't sign the contract and we haven't paid the bill."

Therefore, service was interrupted beginning at 6 p.m. Monday - after the offices had closed for the day - and continued until the issue was temporarily straightened out by 11 a.m. today.

McCrosson said 911 service was never interrupted because all calls are routed through a county system and the city, in fact, sent out a reverse-911 during the evening Monday to assure residents that all emergency services, including police and fire, were still available to them.

McCrosson said the city is continuing to negotiate with ACC Business on a new contact deal. Through a spokesman, the phone company declined comment.