Ranch IDA hopes policy improves customer service

LAKEWOOD RANCH — To further improve customer service offered at Lakewood Ranch Town Hall, the Inter-District Authority is moving forward with plans to modify its emergency after-hours operations procedures.

At a meeting Sept. 15, IDA officials approved a change in their employee policy that now puts participating staff members on a “standby” rotation to respond to emergency calls after business hours.
Currently, after-hour operations calls are directed to an answering service, which determines if the calls are considered an “emergency” and then forwards select calls to Town Hall’s operations team to be addressed.

However, Town Hall Executive Director Eva Rey said an answering service is not familiar with Town Hall’s operations and a member of the operations’ team will be better able to determine if the substance of the call is, indeed, considered an emergency.

“We feel that by doing this, we will enhance the customer service available to residents after hours,” Rey said. “We didn’t want anyone filtering through the issues (for us).

“We’re not changing the way we would respond to issues,” she said. “We’re basically replacing that answering service with staff we already have and who are familiar with the community and the types of issues that we have after hours.”

Under the new system, which likely will take effect by mid-November, a member of the Town Hall Operations staff will be given a $50 per week stipend to take after-hour calls and dispatch an on-call worker to complete repairs or other necessary maintenance, if necessary.

Rey said the idea for the change primarily came as a result of concerns she was hearing from residents.
The change will result in an annual budget increase of about $1,200, but Rey said those expenses would be absorbed into the IDA’s budget.

Additionally, in October, Rey intends to present plans to hire a part-time weekend parks services position. The individual would be responsible for general weekend maintenance issues, as well as checking on the community’s parks and other issues.

The individual, she said, would be able to handle many weekend emergency calls from residents.
Rey said she hopes having a weekend presence will ward off incidents of vandalism, as well.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].