A Dane County judge ruled in favor Friday of a postponement of the implementation of certain parts of the 911 Center’s newly introduced automated-attendant call handling system.

Dane County Circuit Judge Juan Colas determined that though the system itself could be implemented, a new dispatching system that handles parking enforcement issues — which are currently routed through the 911 Center — would not be put into effect because of the city of Madison’s objections as to how it would be funded.

Following an audit of the county’s 911 Center in February 2009, Dane County 911 Director John Dejung went about following the recommendations of the audit to streamline and improve activities in the center.

The most prominent recommendations were the training of staff and the addressing of the center’s handling of thousands of non-emergency calls on a monthly basis.

The new system would route non-emergency calls to other departments rather than having them be handled by 911 emergency dispatchers, as was the case until recently.

The city filed an affidavit Friday morning requesting a restraining order on the system’s implementation.

“We need to tell Dane County citizens we’ve done everything we can to improve our 911 Center, so that in their hour of need, they get a 911 dispatcher, not someone who’s working on parking violations,” County Executive Kathleen Falk said following Colas’ decision.

City Attorney Michael May said Falk was without the authority to implement the system given its connection to operating practices.

“We think these are significant costs and an injury to the city,” May said of the estimated $33,000 cost of dispatching parking enforcement officials to Madison residents.

Mayor Dave Cieslewicz said in a recent blog post Madison citizens should not have to pay for a service already included in their county tax bill. He added he strongly supported Colas’ decision to postpone Falk’s attempt to push through the dispatch system in what he characterized as “cavalier fashion”.

The bulk of the new non-emergency call system went into effect Saturday, a prospect Falk was enthusiastic about. She said though 911 Center dispatchers may still be faced with handling parking enforcement calls, the system’s intent to free up the time and resources of dispatchers would be mostly preserved.

“We regret that the city is still taking the position … that we ought to be deploying our very valuable 911 dispatchers to handle their parking violations,” Falk said. “There are many other calls that come in on these non-emergency lines, and they will be deployed to a better use than our 911 operators.”

County attorney Marcia MacKenzie argued the issue surrounding parking calls is a personnel issue and not an operational issue as the city had claimed. Colas determined the parking issue to be an operational practice, but that the city’s request for an injunction of the system’s implementation as a whole could potentially endanger county residents.

“The question here is not harm to the city or harm to the county, the question here is harm to the public,” MacKenzie said.

Further hearings in the case are to be scheduled today. The fate of the parking enforcement dispatches will be determined sometime afterward.