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Neighborhood Stabilization highlights 311 rollout, tornado recovery work and staff pay concerns
Summary
Acting director Erin Clifford said the city's new 311 Citizen Service Bureau has handled about 120,000 service requests and played a central role in tornado recovery and quality assurance, but she warned that Neighborhood Stabilization staff are underpaid compared with peer cities and requested technology and equipment upgrades.
Acting Neighborhood Stabilization Division director Erin Clifford updated the Budget & Public Employees Committee on May 12 about the city's new 311 Citizen Service Bureau (CSB), disaster response work since the spring tornado and staffing and technology needs to improve responsiveness.
Clifford said the CSB has already processed roughly 120,000 service requests across web, phone and social channels since it became fully operational and that NIS staff were integral in the city's tornado recovery — documenting damage for FEMA, staffing the Disaster Recovery Center and performing field quality‑assurance during winter storms.
"They effectively and efficiently submit and route the city service requests that come in through the web, through IVA, through calls, through emails," Clifford said, and credited Neighborhood Improvement Specialists (NIS) for neighborhood outreach, cleanups and the new Registered Neighborhood Organizations (RNO) program that the division will administer.
Clifford raised compensation concerns: she cited peer comparisons (Minneapolis, Denver, Atlanta and others) where similar code‑compliance/community‑engagement positions command materially higher salaries, and she warned that the pay study used for city classifications did not identify a comparable title and therefore has left NIS pay behind local market levels. She asked the committee to consider raises and retention measures to avoid losing experienced staff.
Operational requests included a replacement city employee ID machine (quoted around $11–12,000), investment in upgrades to the 311 telephone/IVA system (language recognition and reliability improvements) and funds to develop a short post‑call survey to identify underserved caller groups. Clifford said those investments would help the bureau shift from reactive case intake to proactive problem‑solving.
Clifford summarized NIS accomplishments: more than 800 neighborhood meetings attended, dozens of cleanups, National Night Out registrations above 120 and a quality‑assurance role during storms that helped prioritize street‑clearing and service delivery. She told the committee the FY27 NIS proposal totals about $3.278 million after some reductions from the budget office.
