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Hello Neighbors:
This week the Council voted unanimously to renew emergency and temporary legislation that would allow retired firefighters to take jobs as 911 call takers and dispatchers without financial penalty to their retirement benefits. This is an important tool in recruiting more employees to the severely understaffed agency.
The Council is doing what it can to address the many deficiencies at the Office of Unified Communications (OUC). I introduced legislation that would separate fire and emergency medical calls from police calls to improve dispatch and services for residents. Councilmember Christina Henderson introduced the retired firefighters bill.
I joined Councilmember Brooke Pinto, who chairs the Committee on Judiciary and Public Safety, in introducing a bill to require public after-action reports following 911 failures. She will also hold a series of oversight hearings this fall, including one jointly with me and the Committee on Public Works and Operations, which I chair, on the topic of emergency dispatch technology. The Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) comes under my committee’s jurisdiction.
Next week my committee will make a recommendation on the Mayor’s nominee to head OCTO, and I will be pressing hard for questions about OCTO’s role in the technology outages that have contributed to the critical failures at OUC this year.
What I’m not seeing is the same sense of urgency from the executive branch – and they are, in fact, the ones responsible for running OUC. They are not leveling with the public and not being transparent about the problems. We’ve seen tragedies and near-tragedies, dropped calls, misdirected responses, poor training for call takers, wrongly classified emergencies, understaffing, technology issues, and long waits – often minutes – for 911 calls to be answered – routinely, not just occasionally.
Despite all of it, the executive has found excuses and refused to share data and facts.
I’m encouraged by Councilmembers Henderson’s and Pinto’s legislation and efforts, and oversight and attention from other members of the Council, as well as my own. My hope is that we’ll see steps from OUC and the Mayor to match.
Phase out of Circulator service and what comes next
Circulator bus service will be phased out in the coming months and the plan announced last week by WMATA and the D.C. Department of Transportation leaves a significant and unacceptable gap in crosstown service for the Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, and Woodley Park neighborhoods. I am working to fix that.
In the days after the announcement of the plan, I immediately reached out to D.C.’s representatives on the WMATA board and I’ve spoken directly to officials at DDOT and WMATA to make sure that, at minimum, when WMATA’s Better Bus Network redesign launches next July, appropriate bus service will return to the neighborhood.
The sunsetting of D.C.’s Circulator service was announced by the Mayor in the spring. It was not ideal, but we agreed to the cut with the assurance that WMATA service would be enhanced to make up for the lost service as part of the WMATA Better Bus Network redesign. We did not anticipate that during the nine-month transition we would lose important connectors like those between Columbia Heights, Adams Morgan, and the Woodley Park metro station.
Robust transit service is critical to the District’s workers, residents, and economy. Especially so in Ward 1, which is compact and where proportionally more residents use public transit than elsewhere in the region. I encourage residents and business owners to contact WMATA and DDOT to share their concerns and the need for critical crosstown and cross-ward service. Please feel free to copy me on any correspondence, which will also help me in making the case.
Read more about what I’m doing on this issue.
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