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Authorizing City Council’s Committee on Legislative Oversight to hold hearings on whether the City should establish a 311 Constituent Contact Center to unburden the current 911 emergency call center and make Philadelphia more responsive to it citizens’ concerns; and further authorizing the Committee in furtherance of such investigation to issue subpoenas as may be necessary to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents to the full extent authorized under Section 2-401 of the Home Rule Charter.
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WHEREAS, In January of 2002 this Administration first introduced the “311 Constituent Contact Center” in the Five Year Plan as a means to “provide a single point of contact for residents requesting information or services”; and
WHEREAS, In subsequent Five Year Plans the Administration again restated its commitment to a 311 Constituent Contact Center to make the City more responsive to citizen concerns and also predicted a savings of $4.8 million over the next five years as a direct result of the call center; and
WHEREAS, In December of 2004 the Administration abandoned the proposed 311 Constituent Contact Center citing budgetary constraints; and
WHEREAS, Many cities throughout the United States, including New York, Chicago and Baltimore, have instituted enormously successful 311 contact centers and have realized more efficient city services to both emergency and non- emergency complaints; and
WHEREAS, Other cities have successfully used the 311 call centers as a way of addressing the collective needs of the entire city and have also seen greater cooperation among various city departments where it had never existed in the past; and
WHEREAS, Of the 3.28 million calls received by 911 operators in 2003, 1.3 million were considered to be non-emergency and could have been handled by a 311 Constituent Contact Center, thus taking pressure of the 911 emergency call center; and
WHEREAS, The proposed 311 call center would have consolidated eight existing phone banks into a centralized, citywide system where calls could be tracked by a single computer system, thereby eliminating redundancies which currently exist and slow down the response time of City agencies; and
WHEREAS, Our citizens may be better served by a 311 Constituent Contact Center and realize better City services in both emergency and non-emergency situations and should have both options available to them within the near future; now therefore
RESOLVED, BY THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, That authority be given to the Committee on Legislative Oversight to hold hearings on whether the City should establish a 311 Constituent Contact Center to unburden the current 911 emergency call center and make Philadelphia more responsive to it citizens’ concerns.
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Committee on Legislative Oversight is authorized to issue subpoenas as may be necessary to compel the attendance of witnesses and the production of documents to the full extent authorized under Section 2-401 of the Home Rule Charter.
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