There’s a hint of déjà vu in the suggestion that the Butler Police Department should eliminate its desk sergeant position and free up another officer for routine patrols. But that’s not to say this old idea is a bad one.

The police department maintains an officer at its desk 24 hours a day to answer phone calls and speak with residents who walk into the station.

If the position were to be eliminated, all calls to report an emergency or a crime would go through 911 at the Butler County Emergency Services department.

“I think it would be a big benefit to the city,” Mayor Tom Donaldson said Thursday night after proposing the city council meeting. “We would have an extra officer patrolling the streets.”

The switch probably would require an increase of 911 personnel, hired at county expense. Donaldson said it would take about six months for the county to prepare for the change.

Eliminating the desk sergeant was first proposed in 2006 by Resource Development and Management, a hired consultant, in a study of ways to cut municipal costs. All emergency calls would be rerouted to the Butler County 911 center instead.

The suggestion resurfaced five years after that, in January 2011. A citizens committee — the Butler City Economic Task Force — was appointed to review the city’s deteriorating fiscal circumstances and to suggest remedies. Elimination of the desk sergeant position was one of the task force’s recommendations.

Then-Mayor Maggie Stock said she and then-Police Chief Tim Fennell studied the idea for nearly two years before they rejected it. The cost of making the switch; the impact on all emergency services due to radio frequencies used for dispatch throughout the county; and the necessity of a desk sergeant at the city station for walk-in business outweighed any cost-saving benefits, she said.

“We’ve been down that path,” Stock said.

So there’s an impulse to echo the former mayor’s sentiment when hearing it proposed again last week by Stock’s successor.

But the times change, sometimes rapidly. The reassignment might be more practical today than it was seven years ago when Stock and Fennell dismissed it.

First, communications technology continually improves, both at the 911 call center and at the individual level. Many more of us now carry cell phones — they’re standard equipment for police patrolmen and the prices for much of that technology is decreasing, too.

Second, there are people routinely on hand at the police station during the day. Officers come and go; they write reports at the station; and the chief is at his desk during the day. Eliminating the desk sergeant is not the same as shuttering the station. And if more manpower is ever needed at the station, officers are just a minute or two away.

Finally, it’s a trade-off, but Butler will benefit from having another patrolman on duty, on the streets and in the neighborhoods where we live and work. That’s where crime happens, and where it can be prevented.

This might be one of those ideas that get better with age. The worse thing that might happen is it doesn’t work; if so, the desk sergeant can always be reinstated.