Each cellular phone you have will cost you an additional dollar a month if Fayette County commissioners approve a proposed E911 charge.

Commissioners will have a public hearing on the matter at their March 25 meeting, 7 p.m. at the County Administrative Complex.

"Nationwide, 25 percent of 911 calls are from cell phones, and 25 percent of those can't tell you where they are," said Commissioner Herb Frady when the county's governing body discussed the additional tax recently.

In Fayette, said emergency dispatch center director Cheryl Rogers, the figure is a little lower. About 15 to 18 percent of 911 calls are from cell phones. But she agreed that many callers who use their cellular phones at the scenes of accidents don't know their locations.

If the county adds the $1 charge to cell phone bills, 30 percent of the money collected can be used to develop technology that would pinpoint the location of a cell phone call for emergency dispatchers, said county manager Billy Beckett. The rest would have to be used for general operating expenses of the county's enhanced emergency dispatch system.

That's a good thing, commissioners said. The current charge of $1.50 per month on home phones has fallen short of paying the cost of maintaining the county's E911 dispatch center ever since Fayette's governments consolidated the operation two years ago, said Beckett, adding that more upgrades are needed in the future.

"The earlier we can start on this, the better off we're going to be," said Frady, adding that the shortfall ran almost $200,000 last year .

If commissioners approve the charge March 25, the county will have to wait 190 days after that before adding the charge to cell phone bills, he said.

Rogers said it's impossible to tell how much money the county would raise by taxing cell phones, because the number of customers each company has is a closely guarded secret.