The three-digit help line Dallas residents have used for years to help with non-emergency issues could be a thing of the past if Dallas City Councilman Philip Kingston has his way.
"We really do have smart people working on it, but I am still running into those five to ten percent of people who report something more complex than a pothole who are dissatisfied with the service,” said Councilman Kingston.
311 is a big city operation with more than 100 full-time employees and 36 temporary workers. Councilman Kingston said this is not a matter of competency within the office, but rather the complexity of the issues Dallas residents are facing.
“I think people deserve to have a human being pick up the phone and have a creative problem solver for the problems they report to the city,” said Kingston. “It would allow us to have greater visibility into the total volume of complaints coming in. Which would also help us with some holistic thinking to prevent these things.”
Councilman Kingston’s plan includes doing away with 311 as it exist now and routing all the calls directly to the council members’ offices. He said he is not suggesting they get rid of the people in 311, but the contrary, taking many of them and possibly hiring more, to cover the calls that will flood into those offices.
Janet Marcum, President of the voluntary Homeowners Association of Northwood Hills, is an avid user of 311, who said she has doubts about the Councilman’s new idea.
"I feel like that would inundate their offices with menial task or things that their time would be better spent on the bigger items, because we certainly have larger items that we need help with,” said Marcum.
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Marcum said she often tells her HOA residents to use 311 to get little things done around the community they catch before she can.
“If [they did] away with 311 it would make my job harder as the President of the voluntary HOA, I encourage homeowners to use it a lot,” said Marcum. “I feel like if we did a better job of letting homeowners know what they can and can’t do with 311 and then separating out what 311 can’t handle, that’s something that you need to talk to a council member about, then it will probably be used more effectively.”
Councilman Kingston admitted this is going to be a hard discussion to have with the City Manager and doesn’t even know how far his idea will go, but that it will be worth it for the people living in Dallas in the long run.
"That concierge type service, that's what our citizens are wanting and that's what I think they deserve,” said Councilman Kingston.
