Austin City Council members present amendments to address staffing crisis at 911 call center

AUSTIN, Texas - During Thursday's budget work session, council members presented their amendments. Several of those amendments involved addressing the staffing crisis at the 911 call center.

"In terms of the 911 call takers, we have 52 vacancies, and we need to work as fast as we can to get those filled up to the people to take the initial calls," said Interim City Manager Jesus Garza.

According to the city budget staff, there are several applications in process to fix that staffing issue. The goal is to be fully staffed in 7–8 months.

To help further, council members proposed amendments to keep 911 callers working and get more on board

"Just creating additional incentives mostly focused on retention for the 911 call center. This is just kind of creating another pay tier and making a handful of other changes so that we are keeping everybody, though we're not in any way discouraging someone from continuing to work at the normal call center," said Jose "Chito" Vela, Austin City Council member for District 4.

Council member Mackenzie Kelly mentioned how heavy a workload current 911 dispatchers deal with.

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"According to what I was told, their staffing levels have remained the same since 2018 and over the last five years, call volume has increased 43%," she said.

She proposed an amendment to add four additional dispatch positions just focused on fire calls.

"I believe this would go a long way to ensuring that we have long term viability of the individuals in those positions, and we're not overtaxing them or overstressing them," said Kelly.

The plan is to work on those amendments next week during the budget approval process.