The city of New Orleans' 911 emergency operating system continues to lag behind national standards while efforts to improve response times through consolidation of call center operators and first-responder dispatchers into one entity remains in limbo.

Councilwoman Susan Guidry said at a budget hearing this week that she hears "shocking" stories from her constituents about the failure of the 911 system and pressed city officials on what could be done to speed improvements.

"Imagine you've got an emergency happening with your child and you call 911 and they say, 'Just a minute I have to patch you to someone else,'" Guidry said. "I can't imagine what a person must go through in that kind of emergency when maybe it takes 10 rings to get an answer and then they have to be passed to someone else."

The 911 system averaged 5,400 dropped calls per month during the summer accounting for nearly 10 percent of its call volume. The acceptable rate, according to national standards, is between 1 percent and 2 percent, said Frith Malin, deputy director of the Orleans Parish Communications District.

The main problem with the system is that there are four different agencies involved in its operation -- Orleans Parish Communications District, the New Orleans Police Department, Fire Department, and Emergency Medical Services -- creating inefficiencies and employee turnover, said Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, deputy mayor for Public Safety and director for the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

The city has been working for two years to consolidate the system into one entity and with a goal to have it operational by January 2014, but bureaucratic concerns have slowed the process, Sneed said.

"I understand (the City Council's) frustrations. We've been talking about it for a while and haven't been able to make it happen," Sneed said. "I'm frustrated also but this will happen at some point next year."

The Orleans Parish Communications District is a quasi-state agency that provides and maintains the building and equipment for the 911 call center where the "complaint operators" and dispatchers work. The operators and dispatchers, however, all work for different employers:, NOPD, NOFD or EMS.

There are currently 41 complaint operators with four in training and three more to be added to staff next year. Complaint operators, who are employees of the police department, receive an average of 50,000 incoming 911 calls per month, which they send to the different dispatchers depending on the complaint.

Emergency call centers should answer 95 percent of all calls within 20 seconds but New Orleans is consistently not meeting that national standard, said Malin who cited the lack of personnel as the most significant issue.

Sneed said 48 people should be enough to allow them to do their job "adequately" but that it is difficult to keep 48 people on staff at all times.

Complaint operators make $25,508 per year in a job that can be thankless, stressful and the target of public criticism, resulting in frequent turnover, Sneed said. Complaint operators are often promoted to the position of dispatcher resulting in even more vacancies that need to be filled.

The key to consolidation, which follows national best practices, is that there would be one team of people with an equal level of training who could fill the roles of both complaint operators and dispatchers, allowing people to rotate from some of the more stressful positions and shifts to reduce burnout, Sneed said.

Consolidation has proven difficult, however, because the city employees with the police, fire and EMS departments are civil servants with specific benefits and protections while the Communications District employees are at-will workers.

If the agencies were consolidated under OPCD, which is under consideration, the city workers would lose their civil service classification.

"What if they have accumulated sick days? Does the city pay them out?" Malin said. "I personally don't thing it's fair to an employee who has been working there for 20 years and suddenly you have no leave left, you've got a lot of cash. Those are some of the logistics we have to work out that are proving more difficult than we initially thought."

Councilwoman Stacy Head supports the consolidation efforts but said at the budget hearing that until that happens 48 operators is not sufficient to safely serve the public.

"I am growing increasingly concerned about the lack of staffing in the 911 call center," Head said. "A 911 call comes in and an NOPD operator answers. If they are overloaded EMS or NOFD steps in and answers and that can be disastrous because EMS and NOFD are not properly trained in NOPD issues."

Sneed said the money for more operators simply isn't in the budget.

The Orleans Parish Communications District, which is funded through telephone fees generated from emergency calls, is also struggling with money issues. For the past four years it has spent more than it has taken in and next year is not expected to be any different with revenue projected to be close to $4.6 million and expenditures nearing $4.9 million.

Orleans Parish voters struck down a proposal in December that would have raised the fees charged by Communications District to $1.26 from 85 cents on wireless calls, $2 from $1 on residential landlines, and $3 from $2 on commercial landlines.

The higher fees would have raised an additional $2 million a year and gone towards the training and increased overtime pay required to consolidate the different departments.