I gotta bill.

I got a new question.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the New York City Council hearing for the Committee on Technology.

This time, as a reminder, please put all devices on silent.

At

no time anyone should approach the day.

If you wish to testify,

please

see one of the sergeant of arms.

Chair, you may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our oversight hearing on 311.

I

am Councilmember Carmen Zellarosa, chair of the Committee on Technology, and today we will be discussing New York City's 311 system.

New York NYC 311 is New York City's 24 hour seven day a week, non-emer emergency services connecting New Yorkers and visitors with city government, providing necessary information and taking complaints.

Launched in 2003 as a centralized telephone call center, 311 has evolved significantly over the past two decades, expanding the ways in which the public can communicate with city government as technology and public expectations have changed.

Today, 311 handles millions of interactions each year through phone calls, text messages, its mobile application and website, providing assistance to more than a in more than 175 languages as the largest 311 system in the country.

NYC 311 plays an essential role in making city government more accessible and responsive to the people it serves.

New Yorkers rely on 311 for a broad range of issues, from questions about parking regulation and sanitation services to filing complaints about heat or hot water in their building.

In many instances, 311 serves as a starting point for resolving an issue by directing a complaint to the appropriate city agency for action.

Today, 311 is more than a customer service system.

The information generated through millions of service requests provide an important source of data for city agencies, elected officials, researchers, advocates, and members of the public through the city's open data portal.

The data can help identify patterns in service delivery, informed discussions about allocations of resources, highlight community needs, and reveal areas where the city may be improved.

Given the central role of 311 plays in the day-to-day functioning of our city, we must continually examine how the system can be improved and modernized.

311 should serve as a tool for accountability and communication between New Yorker New Yorkers and local government.

Today we will be considering three bills intended to improve New York City 311 and its services and the services it provides.

Intro 173 by Councilmember Dinowitz in relation to the use of global positioning systems coordinates for 311 complaints and service requests.

Intro 669 by Deputy Speaker Williams in relation to referring 311 non-emergency traffic condition complaints to the Transportation Bureau of the Police Department, and intro 800 by Councilmember Schulman, requiring the 311 Customer Service Center to redirect requests for services or complaints to the appropriate agencies.

We look forward to hearing from the administration, advocates, and members of the public about these bills, as well as broader opportunities to make NYC 311 more resilient, accessible, user-friendly, and effective for all New Yorkers.

I'd like to thank the committee's staff, policy analyst Eric Brown, Legislative Council Irina Baba Babaski, and Chief of Staff James Burke and Hiba Imad for working in and putting this hearing together.

I will say there are more than 15 other bills that we're not considering today on 311.

So even though we're light on folks today, I want to be sure to emphasize that 311 is an important issue that this council cares about.

Specifically, there's a lot of legislation to try and make it work a little better.

I'll now turn to Councilmember Dinowitz to deliver his opening remarks.

We weren't sure who you're going to call first.

Oh, I'm

sorry.

Um Thank you, Chair.

Um, for the hearing and for hearing um my bill.

Of all the issues we face in our city, the one that rises to the top time and again is is quality of life.

Um, and I'm often reminded of this because during COVID, during the height of when there was fear surrounding all of us.

And I was doing before I was in office doing wellness calls to our older adults.

I started at these calls expecting to hear the tragic stories of people losing loved ones, being afraid to go out to get eggs and milk.

And the vast majority of my calls really were about quality of life, were about the noise or about the cracks in the sidewalk.

They wanted to go out for a walk, and the cracks in the sidewalks were preventing them from safely doing that.

Um, you know, illegal dumping places.

So, you know, I think about this because at the height of when fear and death was permanent permeating our city, quality of life still rose to the top as this critical issue for many New Yorkers.

Um quality of life speaks to our ability to live with safety and with dignity in our old in our own city.

Streets rife with potholes, hydrants that are running and wasting water, darkened streets due to broken broken street lamps, flooded homes due to blocked sewer lines, broken fences in our parks.

These are just some of the quality of life issues that were not addressed do impact that safety and quality of life and dignity that we cherish so much.

Here in New York City, of course, we have 311, a system through which New Yorkers can report and address our quality of life concerns.

But we know 311 is in need of improvement.

Today we are discussing my bill, intro 173, which will require 311 to use GPS data to pinpoint exactly where constituent wants to report their issue.

Time and again, constituents call my office because 311 was used, but the city agency either couldn't find the location or went to the wrong location.

Um we had a missing hydrant reported, but DEP repaired a separate hydrant down the block.

On a service road in my district, a constituent was unable to file a 311 complaint because the stretches on the service road have no street address.

Lights on an overpass in my district were out.

Because there was no address on the overpass, the constituent called 311 instead of using the app.

The report was logged manually, and three months later the lights were still out.

And when there was follow-up done, we eventually were given the response that the lights weren't fixed because the location could not be found.

A constituent who reported a blocked sewer line had to describe it as a hundred feet from his house toward the direction of the sewer plant, which is hardly an efficient way to describe a location.