City Hall's customer service initiative

Dallas City Hall is really pushing customer service. Why? The answer is obvious. When citizens complain about the level of service they receive from the city, they usually voice those complaints to their city council representative, who, in turn, tells city staff in no uncertain terms to rectify this matter immediately. So the less complaints coming through, the better the staff looks in the eyes of their bosses. And, yes, those on the staff of city government do consider the members of the council as their ultimate bosses.

So, how is the city doing? Crime does need to come down and customer service has never been the strong point of the Dallas Police Department. I’m not sure customer service is the hallmark of any law enforcement agency. And the city does need to work on strengthening its code enforcement, although City Manager Mary Suhm is well aware of that and is trying to hack her way through all the thorny hedges surrounding that issue.

But the city does so many things so well. Dallas Water Utilities is top notch. In fact, I fail to understand why people pay more for a gallon of bottled war than they do for a gallon of gasoline when they can get superior tasting water right out of their own faucets. Especially, when so many of those plastic bottles wind up in our landfill because too few people recycle.

Which brings me to the city’s superb Sanitation Department. Its comparatively new single-stream recycling program is far advanced of what’s available in most comparable cities. My only criticism is I am convinced we could save tax dollars by going to once-a-week garbage pickup and once-a-week recycling pickup. That is, if more people knew about the city’s recycling program and how to recycle.

And, in a nutshell, that is the area I consider the city’s greatest weakness. Dallas city government, for the most part, is giving citizens more than the maximum service they should expect for the amount of tax dollars they pay for that service. What the city is failing to do is informing the citizens of this fact.

And, frankly, I don’t know how to solve that problem. I wish I had a magic wand I could wave that would instantaneously make every Dallas citizen aware of the city’s recycling program and have recycling become part of their nature. Perhaps videos like this one will help, but I doubt it, because it doesn’t educate, it doesn’t even really inform. It comes across more like self aggrandizement. What’s more, it takes more than superb city services to make Dallas a great city. It takes a heart, soul, personality and character, four elements missing from the being that is Dallas.

But the video is a start. It does show the city is trying and it does highlight recycling. Besides, I even know some of the "average citizens" in the video.