By Erik German
Whatever their issue -- trouble with potholes, questions on garbage or complaints about permits -- Brookhaven residents now have just one number to call.
Creating the call center fulfills a key promise Supervisor Brian Foley made during his 2005 campaign. He is up for re-election in November.
"This truly is a revolutionary day," Foley said at the call center's official launch Wednesday in Farmingville. "451-TOWN will help us give our residents the top-flight service they deserve."
Councilwoman Carol Bissonette called the $1.45-million center "the biggest investment that we have made for our residents in decades and that investment is going to pay back tremendous dividends."
After callers receive their case numbers, operators create work orders that are passed on to town departments for follow-up. Monitoring the success and timeliness of the town's response becomes the job of ServiceStat, the data-driven management system Foley is piloting in a handful of departments. Modeled on Baltimore 's widely admired CitiStat program, ServiceStat compiles performance data for town departments and holds managers accountable for those numbers at bi-weekly grillings.
The phone center's director, Brian Pratt, said that since July three full-time and five part-time operators have been fielding calls redirected from other departments to test the system. They're handling 300 to 500 calls per day, he said, well fewer than their capacity of 200 to 300 per hour.
On Long Island, the towns of Babylon and North Hempstead have installed 311-style call centers in the past two years. Backers of the systems say that a growing number of municipalities nationwide have benefited since installing them.
"In three years, Chicago cut its response time to graffiti complaints in half; Baltimore saved more than $10 million by consolidating phone operations; and New Orleans has used the system to deliver information to families displaced by Hurricane Katrina," said Tom Mazur, a vice president with Lagan 311, the company supplying the software for Brookhaven's system.
Tom Talbot, of the Middle Island Civic Association, hailed the new service. "Gone will be the days of being bounced around, playing phone tag to get your concerns met," he said.