A Mercury News survey of more than 50 local cities, counties, school districts, utilities and hospitals found significant variations in the progress agencies have made toward fixing their Y2K problems, as well as the time and money they've spent. Many cities and state departments will be debugging their systems well into the summer and even as late as December. But all said they'd be ready by year's end. If computers do malfunction, most of these tasks could be done anyway. Most said they had already drawn up or were developing contingency plans to operate in the event their computers failed or the power and telephones went out.
Many cities plan to open their emergency operations centers on New Year's Eve.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District has an extensive plan to operate for two weeks without power or water treatment chemicals. But a few cities, such as Los Altos, Los Gatos and Redwood City, plan to brave the rollover with just their regular disaster plans in place. The year 2000 problem stems from the practice of storing the year as two digits instead of four. Many computer systems may read the double zeros of the new year as 1900 rather than 2000. Calculations based on dates are pervasive in computer programs, and interpreting the year wrong could cause systems to malfunction.