Wheeler takes troubled 911 center from Fritz

Mayor reassigns other major bureaus to the same City Council members who had them before he took them over at the beginning of the budget process

Mayor Ted Wheeler took the Bureau of Emergency Communictions from Commissioner Amanda Fritz when he reassigned agencies to the members of the City Council on Friday.

The switch was not completely unexpected. The City Ombudsman accused BOEC of underestimating hold times at the 911 center it oversees for many years last week. Fritz had been in charge it for much of that time, along with former Commissioner Steve Novick, who was defeated by Commissioner Chloe Eudaly last year.

After the ombudsman's report was released, the council voted to study 911 response times. BOEC has been chronically understaffed for years and will likely need additional employees to meet its goal of answering 90 percent of 911 calls within 20 seconds. The report found the average response time in now 23 seconds, not one second as BEOC had been reporting.

Other major assignments remained the same as when Wheeler took all bureaus at the beginning of this year's budget process. For example, he is keeping the Portland Police Bureau and the Bureau of Housing. Commissioner Nick Fish is keeping the Portland Water Bureau and the Bureau of Environmental Services. Commissioner Dan Saltzman is keeping the Portland Bureau of Transportation. Commissioner Amanda Fritz is keeping Portland Parks & Recreation. And Commissioner Chloe Eudaly is keeping the Office of Neighborhood Involvement and Bureau of Development Services, where she was in the process of changing director before Wheeler assigned them to himself.

The memo announcing the assignments can be read here.