VALLEY CITY, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – The traditional phone lines for the Barnes County Courthouse and several other Barnes County offices are operating normally following a nine day delay to get the line into the courthouse repaired.

Barnes County officials said a technician from Lumen repaired the phone line going into the courthouse on Tuesday, April 9th. The phone lines stopped operating Sunday, March 31st after a line going into the courthouse went out.

Barnes County I.T. Director Jason Thiel said it took our phone provider, Lumen formerly known as CenturyLink or Qwest several days to get a technician to Valley City to repair the bad line. During that nine day period BEK Communications provided the county with a temporary line.

Thiel said as a result of what happened, coupled with the extra long repair delay, Barnes County officials approved hiring BEK Communications to be their new phone line provider this week moving forward.