Appearing before the Board of Commissioners Wednesday morning during a budget retreat, Steve Smith said he's becoming convinced that the current setup is not working.
"I think you're aware that we had another pretty significant glitch with the call center this morning but I do think we have that remedied and I surmise by this time that we have all those next 700 appointments scheduled," he said.
Smith brought up the wait list when Commissioner Rebecca McCall asked whether the commissioners could provide resources or do anything "that would help with the call center."
"I'm not sure that this is our future," he said. "I really want to propose, at least we need to consider that perhaps there's a different way of doing this. I had some really personal conversations with people that are very very frustrated. And what they don't like is being thrown into the maul and competing for very limited appointments in this scramble, no matter how robust the call center. They're already stressed and that just adds more to their predicament. And so an option for us to think about — and we're ready to pivot very quickly, depending on your feedback — is opening up a wait list so that we could open up the call center five days a week. I could let you enroll on line or through a phone call and I think we let you get in a virtual line.