NORTH PROVIDENCE — A glitch in the new debit card system allowing members of the Police and Fire Departments to fuel town-owned vehicles at two local gasoline stations had some town employees wondering over the weekend whether the town had failed to pay its bills.

The problem surfaced at the start of the holiday weekend, when several police officers reported that special town-issued gasoline cards were being declined at the pump at the Shell Station on Mineral Spring Avenue when they went to fill up their cruisers.

Some officers speculated that the town might have spent more than anticipated in turning a former Chinese restaurant into an annex for the Police and Fire Departments and didn’t have enough cash to keep up with the card payments.

Mayor Charles Lombardi acknowledged that in the middle of the weekend, he, too, was baffled because the pumps were accepting cards issued to town’s inspections division, but not to police and fire.

But public safety vehicles were in no risk of running out of fuel. Store managers at Shell realized that something was awry and instructed clerks to accept the cards by getting an imprint of the cards and filling out the amount of gasoline purchased until the situation could be ironed out.

Yesterday, a clerk at the station on Mineral Spring Avenue said he did the paperwork for about a dozen police officers yesterday.

Rocco Gesualdi, the town’s director of administration, said the glitch was, in part, the result of rising gasoline prices.

“When we worked out our agreement with Shell, I think gasoline was selling for $2.64 a gallon and we thought $50,000 was enough to cover the projected cost,” Gesualdi said. But with gasoline now at $4.11 a gallon, the limit was reached more quickly than expected. When the limit was reached, the pumps refused to accept the cards.

“We’ve talked with Tom Breckel, who owns the two Shell stations [one on Mineral Spring Avenue and one on Smith Street] and he assures us that we will back to normal” by this morning, said Lombardi’s chief of staff, G. Richard Fossa.

The gasoline debit card system was instituted five months ago as an alternative to having town employees fuel the vehicles at a pump behind the police and fire complex on Mineral Spring Avenue.

There was concern that someone was stealing gasoline from the old pump, but Lombardi said the town-owned pump was costing too much to operate.

And the town had been fined $8,500 by the state Department of Environmental Management because of alleged leaks in the gasoline storage tank. Lombardi said the fine was reduced to $1,500 on the condition that the town stop operating the pump and have the two underground storage tanks removed.

The town is seeking bids on the storage tank removal.

Lombardi said the town has reduced gasoline consumption by prohibiting town employees from driving town-owned cars home, but he’s still trying to figure out how to save more.

Lombardi said he’s been toying with the idea of having police patrol some areas on scooters.

Soon after taking office in April 2007, Lombardi announced a series of measures aimed at cutting down on the use of fuel, such as setting up surveillance cameras at the pump behind the police station to ensure that it was being used only by authorized users.

The following month, Eleuterio Patriarca, who went back to work in the Public Works Department after serving as chauffeur of sorts to former mayor and now Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis and former interim Mayor John Sisto Jr., was dismissed for filling his personal sport-utility vehicle with gas in post-midnight visits to the town’s fueling station.

Surveillance tapes showed Patriarca fueling his SUV at the town pump on four separate occasions in April and May last year, drawing a total of $140 in gasoline, all between midnight and 2 a.m.

rdujardi@projo.com