EDITORIAL – 311 won’t answer city problems

Under the leadership of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Pittsburgh is reinstating a response line to… Under the leadership of Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, Pittsburgh is reinstating a response line to register nonemergency complaints and suggestions about city issues.

Is there a pothole that’s bugging you?

Is your neighbor in violation of a city code?

Just dial 311.

The mayor’s service center will employ three operators and one manager, and will accept calls from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. An automated answering service will take calls on weekends or after hours. Concerns and suggestions will be sent to the appropriate city department to be dealt with, according to the Post-Gazette.

Callers, after voicing their complaints or making their suggestions, will be given a reference number by an operator. If the problem isn’t taken care of in a reasonable amount of time, the caller can follow up on the complaint. The help line can then check up on the department responsible for taking action.

“If there’s a burning building, call 911. If there’s a burning question or a burning issue in the community, call 311,” Ravenstahl said in the Post-Gazette article.

This system isn’t new to Pittsburgh. Two years ago, Mayor Tom Murphy closed the center amid Pittsburgh’s financial crisis. Before his death, Mayor Bob O’Connor started the process of reopening the center.

Ravenstahl says he doesn’t care about the city’s financial problems, according to the Post-Gazette. He just wants to get to the bottom of what’s concerning the people of Pittsburgh. That’s not such a bad idea, but what happened to preventative planning – shouldn’t the city take care of potholes and other problems before the people have to dial a number to report it? Obviously, city officials can’t be everywhere, and citizens can offer extremely valuable feedback and suggestions, but we would like to see our tax dollars working for us without feeling as though we have to make a phone call.

The call center has been open for months now in a testing phase and is averaging about 150 calls a day. The service will be advertised to all residents on postcards and billboards in the future.

It’s fantastic that the city is reaching out to its residents and creating a forum for Pittsburghers to report things, ask questions and make comments on the city. However, would we really need such a service if the city were doing its job in the first place?

Calling 311 won’t cure the city’s money woes, and while it seems like a nice gesture, it has the potential to be – at a price tag of $150,000 – a waste of our money. We’ve got bigger problems, like our debt, to deal with, and it would be a shame if this service deteriorated into a “gripe” line, fielding useless calls.

Let’s pump our money into ventures that have a higher likelihood of paying off.

We’d love to see city leaders taking the initiative to make our city better, instead of waiting by the phones.