The Our Town - Clarenville Blog by Paul Tilley

It may have worked okay 20-30 years ago, but getting Town assistance by calling the Mayor or Councillors out of bed when an incident occurs during the night is no longer a suitable approach for a modern town.    As we have grown and as experience has shown, situations occur time-to- time, day and night, where citizens need to contact the town in order to address a situation.    As we witnessed many times over the past few years, if a water line breaks overnight, few people would have any idea who to call – while time is important.   The non-emergency telephone number 3-1-1 exists in larger municipalities in Canada and the United States.    Dialing this single number would allow a resident to obtain important non-emergency services through a central, all-purpose phone number quickly and effectively. The implementation for Clarenville could be relatively simple.   We can either contract the existing 24/7 fire call service or we can contract a call centre to take the calls.  T