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Council weighs changes to on-call dispatch routing, staff to involve Public Safety
Summary
City staff and the council discussed options after dispatch staff said they would no longer act as the 'middleman' for utility emergency calls; options include training daytime staff, changing recorded message to 'call 911' after hours, or buying software/phones to route alerts directly to utility crews.
Tommy Joe briefed the council on a recurring operational problem: the dispatch center’s practice of routing certain utility emergency alerts (the 'press one' or white-phone messages) to internal phones has staff at the Law Center acting as an intermediary for utility crews, and the dispatch side now objects to continuing that role.
Tommy Joe provided counts for the previous 12 months to quantify the workload: "we had 14 sewer ... gas 11 ... electric 8," and outlined the options the city is evaluating: train front-office staff to take day calls and forward after-hours calls differently, change the recorded message to instruct callers to hang up and call 911 after hours, or procure software and dedicated on-call phones (estimated training cost about $560 and roughly $1,800 per year for software). He described a near-term fix of changing the recorded message to say 'call 911' and recommended referring the operational question to the Public Safety committee for a full discussion of responsibilities and continuity.
Council members agreed the issue raised public-safety and operational concerns and asked staff to place the topic on the Public Safety agenda for more detailed review with police, fire and dispatch representatives. No final change in policy or procurement was made at this meeting.
