AUSTIN -- An agreement between the City of Austin and Williamson County could shorten emergency response times for people living near the Travis and Williamson County border lines.
The Austin City Council approved last Thursday an inter-local agreement between the city and Williamson County, which would help 9-1-1 dispatchers connect callers with the nearest emergency service agency.
District 6 council member Jimmy Flannigan told KVUE dispatchers oftentimes have difficulty determining the jurisdiction a call falls under because of blurred city/county lines.
"Because of weird annexation patterns, it can be very complicated for a dispatcher under very tight time pressure to make a judgment about where all those weird little lines fall," Flannigan said.
The City of Austin and Williamson County hope to fix that problem under this new agreement, which Flannigan said is still in its early stages.
"What we'll have now is when those calls come in, they will automatically be rerouted to the nearest public safety person, be it whatever jurisdiction they're actually coming from," he said.
Leah Miller knows all too well the troubles of having an Austin zip code in Williamson County.
"Trying to get any kind of services around here is an absolute torture," Miller said. "You go around and around trying to get to the right government agency because we're right on the edge of three or four different jurisdictions."
Nearly three years ago, Miller said she found her husband on the floor of her house suffering from a back spasm. Neither she nor her neighbors could help him up, so she called 9-1-1.
"And it took two, three, or four minutes and two or three changes of dispatchers to get to the right emergency services that I need," Miller said.
Those minutes felt like forever at the time, especially knowing the Jollyville Fire Department is less than a mile away from her home.
"Sometimes I've worried whether I would just pile into the car and go down to Jollyville myself, because that makes me feel a lot better," Miller said.
Flannigan doesn't know how soon this partnership between the city and the county will develop, but Miller said the agreement is a sign of hope because the minutes might really matter one day.
"It is a comfort to have knowledge that it will get through to dispatch and the right people sooner," Miller said.