It’s been a mixed bag of inquiries from COVID-19 questions to general questions around city services.
On March 27, the City of Delta established a call centre that has been open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. seven days a week.
Director of planning Marcy Sangret told the Optimist, that Delta is pleased with how the operation has been working.
“We have always taken calls from the public during normal business hours, but at the end of March we launched the call centre, which included coverage of the weekends,” said Sangret. “The call centre has been running out of a combination at city hall Monday to Friday and remotely on Saturday and Sunday.”
Sangret said call volumes have varied.
“We certainly get more calls Monday to Friday and that includes calls on day-to-day business not related to COVID-19. On the weekends we have fewer calls and we still get calls not related to the COVID-19 situation and our staff try to manage those calls if they come in on the weekend,” she said. “We have everything from a dozen calls on some days and upwards of 50. We had a lot of calls over the Easter long weekend and it has gone down a bit as people have settled in.”
Sangret said the kinds of calls around COVID-19 have been around what’s open and what is not, lots of calls around the now cancelled spring clean-up and other city services.
“There have been other questions about how things can be opened, as well as bylaw infractions and how people can do business on-line such as paying their bills or pick up blue recycling bins,” she said. “We wanted to put this in place, anticipating people would be looking to the city for information around the COVID-19 situation. I think other agencies, like the province, have done a really good job in getting information out there as well. Our website has been maintained daily. Staff are also monitoring our Delta app. This call centre has just provided a different avenue for us to respond to concerns and questions.”
Delta’s call centre is available at 604-946-4141.
