Mayor’s urgent fix for 911 still hung up
Lee pledged turnabout on key response time, but it remains below nationwide standard
In the world of 911 emergency calls, it’s the one statistic that matters most: the percentage that are answered within 10 seconds.
The industry standard is 90 percent, the nationally accepted target signaling a properly functioning call center. In early May, San Francisco dispatchers were answering just 75 percent of calls within 10 seconds, prompting Mayor Ed Lee to issue an executive order demanding major change.
On May 9, he stood outside his City Hall office and told reporters he was laser-focused on getting the call response rate up.
“The thing that I need most? I need that under-10-second turnaround ... so the public is reassured that we’ve got a 911 system that works not a year
from now, but right now,” he said.
“I want that 10-second turnaround standard to be there right now,” he repeated. “It has to be within the next month — a month or two months.”
The problem, the mayor acknowledged, was understaffing and low morale at the dispatch center, and he formed a task force to find ways to improve those to improve call takers’ response time. Three months later — and after numerous task force meetings, reports and training sessions for new dispatchers — what’s the response time at San Francisco’s 911 call center? Exactly the same. Stuck at 75 percent.
That means a quarter of the time, people making a 911 emergency call in San Francisco are waiting more than 10 seconds just for someone to pick up the phone. Until that call is answered, no police officer will respond if someone’s broken into your house. No firefighter will respond if your house is ablaze. No paramedic will respond to save your child from choking or treat your spouse who’s having a heart attack.
Currently, an average of 287 calls to 911 in San Francisco are abandoned every day, meaning the caller hangs up before there’s an answer. Some of those are dialed inadvertently, but many aren’t. The number is actually higher than it was in early May when there were 243 abandoned calls on average per day.
In a city that is a hotbed of technology and wealth, where the annual municipal budget is an astounding $10 billion, the failure to successfully provide this most basic service — and to make any progress so far in improving it — is mind-boggling.
Despite repeated requests for an interview, Lee wasn’t made available for this column. In an emailed statement, he said: “Improving our 911 response time remains a top priority. No delay is acceptable when we’re dealing with life and death situations, which is why I continue to direct staff to exhaust every possibility to improve call response times.”
Robert Smuts, deputy director of the city’s Department of Emergency Management, defended the call center’s performance, noting there’s usually a spike of 911 calls during the summer and more dispatchers off on vacation.
“A lot of effort has gone into maintaining that 75 percent level,” he said.
For that matter, though, a lot of effort has gone into the Giants’ miserable season, the failed health care talks in Washington, D.C., and President Trump’s Twitter account, too.
So what has changed over the past three months at the 911 call center? Ask some of those who work there.
“It hasn’t changed at all,” said Burt Wilson, president of the dispatchers union. “It’s all the same.”
“He doesn’t get it,” Joan Vallarino, a dispatcher for 13 years, said of Lee. “I don’t know how he thinks he’s going to solve this. This place has been neglected. It’s not even benign neglect — it’s willful neglect.”
Matthew Roybal, a dispatcher for 12 years, agreed. “There’s no change, really,” he said. “It feels like there are a lot of fires being put out, and it’s hard to make progress.”
Roybal himself is making a different kind of progress, studying Web programming in his off-hours in hopes of finding a new job by the end of the year. He’s already told management at the call center he’s leaving.
His will be one more departure in a department rife with them, and it seems like one the city really can’t afford. Just three years ago, Roybal was heralded in a Board of Supervisors meeting as the city’s Dispatcher of the Year for his calm, astute coordination of emergency dispatch during the July 2013 Asiana plane crash at San Francisco International Airport.
Fire Chief Joanne HayesWhite said during the ceremony that dispatchers like Roybal are essential during major catastrophes. “If they don’t do their jobs efficiently and effectively, we can’t do ours,” she said.
But Roybal, a 39-year-old Pacifica resident, said with morale at the dispatch center continuing to sink, he’s had enough. Other dispatchers said privately they’re looking for a way out, too.
It’s not just the 75 percent answer rate that hasn’t budged. Working conditions for the dispatchers haven’t changed either.
The city is rightfully focused on bringing on more dispatchers to help handle the load. It is training new ones, persuading retirees to come back part time, and borrowing employees from other departments. But there doesn’t seem to be any focus on retaining the experienced dispatchers already in place, a strategy that’s self-defeating.
Since April, seven new recruits have finished training, but five dispatchers have quit or retired. One woman, a mother with no job lined up, recently quit because she couldn’t stand the working conditions anymore. Currently, 110 fully trained dispatchers are working in San Francisco; a fully staffed center would have 165, according to Smuts.
He predicted the call center will be able to meet the longsought 90 percent answer rate target by December. He said 10 to 12 newly trained dispatchers will be on the job by the end of September, with similar numbers of new dispatchers joining the staff in December and again every few months throughout 2018 and 2019. The training classes are being paid for with an extra $27.4 million per year allotted to the center since Lee took office.
The mayor is also looking at ways to divert calls to the city’s nonemergency phone number, currently answered by 911 dispatchers, to other public safety agencies.
Smuts said these changes will make a big difference in the stress levels and morale of the current dispatchers. But many say they are tired of waiting.
They’re tired of the scheduling that, remarkably, is still done by hand and takes at least two people working full time to put together — people who could be answering 911 calls instead. The new city budget provides for one of those slots to be filled by a newly hired clerk, but a dispatcher will continue in the other post.
“They say we’re getting scheduling software, but they’ve been saying that for seven years,” Roybal said.
Management is testing a computerized scheduling system, and it should be ready for use too, according to Francis Zamora, spokesman for the department.
Roybal said that other than during planned vacation time, he has not had a single weekend off in his 12 years on the job. He said he had to “jump through a lot of hoops” to attend his brother’s wedding in Hawaii this year, even with several months’ notice.
Roybal said it’s common to have to work mandatory overtime on Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and Mother’s Day. Other dispatchers tell frustrating stories of not getting days off to attend their own bridal showers or graduations.
Smuts countered that his department tries to let dispatchers off for the most essential events, such as family weddings, and in other cases allows them to trade days off. He said management is talking with the union about creating alternative schedules to ease the burden.
Regardless, Roybal is done. Now that he has a wife — a former dispatcher who quit to become a nurse — a 2½-yearold son and a baby on the way, he wants a more normal life.
Some appreciation for the overworked staff wouldn’t hurt either, he said.
“They celebrate Dispatcher Week once a year,” he said. “One day they ordered pizza. That’s really kind of the extent of it . ... People retire after 30 years, and it’s just like, ‘OK, thanks. Bye.’ ”
There are yoga classes offered some days at noon, but those are really only attended by management. The dispatchers are stuck at their desks answering calls.
“There’s a massage chair in the kitchen,” Vallarino said. “That does not help with my morale.”
Smuts said the task force established by Lee in May has met four or five times, though smaller groups have also met. The mayor attended one meeting, he said. The group is preparing “an action plan” to improve the staffing, morale and response time at dispatch center that is due to the mayor by the end of September.
Curiously, no dispatchers have been invited to attend the meetings and are not involved in crafting the plan.
Perhaps, just as with the yoga classes, they’d be too busy answering calls to take part anyway.