City Launches Information Hotline

When does a small town become a city? As Elk Grove has grown in size over the last decade—becoming the second-largest city in Sacramento County—it has added services standard in larger metropolitan areas, hiring an emergency operations manager and commissioning a study on the city’s economic prospects.

Now, in another sign of Elk Grove’s graduation to the big leagues, the city this week launched a new information hotline that will allow residents to keep track of these and other services provided by local government.

Dubbed “Ask Elk Grove,” the program includes a phone number, 916-691-CITY, and email address, askelkgrove@elkgrovecity.org, that Elk Grovians can contact with any non-urgent question about the city, from how to get their trash removed to what to do about the stray skunk stinking up their backyard.  Residents who don’t speak English can take advantage of interpretation services in more than 240 languages and dialects.

“One call truly does it all,” Mayor Steven Detrick said in a news release about the program.

A rotating cast of city workers will respond to queries between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday. The helpful elves normally work in departments like code enforcement and animal services and were chosen for the job based on their success interacting with the public, city spokesperson Christine Brainerd said.

Brainerd said the city has received about 60 calls and emails to the hotline since its debut Monday. One caller wanted to know who to contact about replanting a street tree that had gotten knocked down. A Sacramento resident asked how to commute by public transit from his home to a job in Elk Grove. They were directed to the appropriate city departments, Brainerd said.

Before the hotline was set up, officials said, the city receptionist would field all calls not directed to a specific department, from the routine to the bizarre.

“One caller asked where to buy jeans in the city of Elk Grove,” Senior Customer Service Specialist Mona Schmidt said.

Would that be a question hotline operators could answer? “Well, we now have more staff to be able to take the time to help them,” Schmidt said.

While many major cities, like Sacramento and San Francisco, staff information hotlines, Elk Grove’s program differs from others because it relies on existing city employees, Brainerd said, resulting in a lower cost to the city.

Coming later this spring: a mobile phone app that will allow residents to snap pictures of problems in their neighborhoods, such as potholes, and upload them directly to city servers.