Don’t call 911 to check time

Atlanta planning 311 line to skim off non-emergency calls

Some relief may be on the way for Atlanta's 911 center, now burdened by about 60 percent of calls coming in classified as non-emergency -- everything from people asking for their trash to be picked up to those tired of listening to a howling dog.

The city is developing plans to create a 311 calling center that would allow residents to call the city on a centralized number to get help with specific non-emergencies.

As part of its budget process, the Atlanta City Council allotted $500,000 for the project.

“If this will cut down on the regular calls to 911 so that the real 911 calls can get through, then oh my goodness, this is wonderful,” said Atlanta councilwoman Carla Smith.

Smith, who has sat in on 911 calls to see how the process works, said dispatchers are often swamped with non-essential calls that take away from important calls. There have been several complaints throughout Atlanta that 911 in general is too slow to respond.

“People will even call and ask what time it is or ask for directions,” Smith said. “We have to free 911 up for what it is intended for.”

In pitching the plan to the city council, Luz Borrero, the city’s deputy chief operating officer, said a 311 system would provide a seamless customer service experience, while allowing the smooth delivery of city services.

She said that with more than half of the city’s 911 calls being non-emergency, the city can appear non-effective in service delivery.

That's Sara Riney's perception. In January 2009, she and her Grant Park neighbors stood on their street – cellphones in hand – and desperately called 911 while their neighbor’s home burned to the ground.

While the city acknowledged negligence and the former director of Atlanta’s 911 Center was fired over the matter, one of the underlying themes of the probe into that incident and several others is that the call center staff was understaffed and overwhelmed with calls.

“In going to community meetings, I was hearing that everybody was going into the same queue, whether it was a life-threatening emergency or someone needing to get a police report,” Riney said. “I don’t know what kind of calls were ahead of me, but for all I know, it could have been someone whose car had been broken into and they were trying to get a report for the insurance, while my neighbor’s house was burning down. That just seems like a huge issue to me.”

Terri Thornberry, the new director of the 911 Center, welcomes the opportunity to split some of her staff’s work.

Between Nov. 1, 2009, and July 14, 2010, Thornberry said 911 fielded 833,808 calls, more than half of them non-emergency.

Within the 911 Center, a separate information desk has been established to help field some non-essential calls. In that same time period, 38,196 calls came into the information desk.

“That is a staggering number and those are calls that would go into 311,” said Thornberry, who started on April 12. “We need something like that desperately for the city, and we do need it separately from 911. I believe 911 needs to be used for life and death situations. Robberies.”

Still, 911 is making progress, Thornberry said. With about 150 staffers – fewer than what they need –  the most recent data survey shows 92 percent of calls into 911 were responded to in nine seconds or less. The national standard is 90 percent.

Unlike cities of similar size and population such as Charlotte and Miami, Atlanta does not have a separate telephone system designed to handle non-emergency calls.

Locally, DeKalb County has a 311 system. Other areas are struggling to develop them.

Georgia’s Public Service Commission has given Cobb County permission to start a 311 system, but county spokesman Robert Quigley said they delayed the project about 18 months ago.

“Because of the economy, it was not a good time,” Quigley said.

In Gwinnett, after setting aside $3.5 million for a 311 line, the county abandoned the project in 2008 when the economy turned. Steve North, director of the county's support services, said Gwinnett has gotten some planning money to re-examine the program, but added that at this point, “311 is not on the radar.”