Douglas County officials are continuing their push to help pay for handling the increasing number of emergency calls they get from people using mobile phones.

The ongoing surge in use of mobile phones for making 9-1-1 calls is stretching the county’s ability to accommodate such services.

And county officials are preparing to once again ask the Kansas Legislature to add a 9-1-1 fee to mobile phone customers’ monthly bills.

Currently, users of traditional land lines pay 75 cents each month in fees to help pay for emergency communications. But with nearly half of all 9-1-1 calls coming from users of mobile phones, less money is coming in to offset the costs of dispatching services.

For more on this story, see the 6News report at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Sunflower Broadband’s channel 6 and pick up a copy of Friday’s Journal-World.