New ACC Commissioner Allison Wright Shares Her Priorities in Athens, Ga.

My priorities as an Athens Clarke County Commissioner are:

Number 1 -  Smart 911 and increased online web-based communications between ACC and the public. Smart911 (www.smart911.com) provides an enhanced level of detail that can be registered to a person's phone. Specific advantages include that a cell phone can be used for 911 communications via texting.

Details about the person who has the specific phone number are registered. In the appropriate areas of the country those details can be used by 911 dispatchers and first responders. Imagine the benefit of having the knowledge of who a 911 dispatcher is speaking to. It might mean a dispatcher could say your child's name, noting the child's age for how to talk with him or her.

Imagine how beneficial it would be for the dispatcher to know that he or she is speaking with a child on the Autism spectrum.

Flip that to knowing the person who has this phone is elderly, with this or that physical limitation. This would help solicit the proper response.

Also, emergency numbers for parents and caregivers are available, too.

I want to be a part of promoting countywide registration for our residents and UGA students while they reside here.

I would like to support the latest level of 911 information usage. If ACC is not accessing the full range of advances that smart911 provides, I would like to work with the appropriate agencies to develop a plan to get our county and the region properly prepared for Smart911 and Next Generation 911.

So that is my Public Safety component.

Number 2 - More online access and therefore less printing and mailing, to be more effective with cost savings.

I would like to the ACC website to be an up-to-date tool for accessing information. The public relations office is currently getting general fund support for printing and mailing costs. I believe that we can save money and achieve more effective communication online than through pieces of mail. These items include but aren't limited to, water billing, Sandy Creek Nature Center promotional pieces, Solid Waste Department flyers and annual booklet. I would like to promote a process that will allow these items to be easily accessed from the ACC website. Downloading these PDFs would be a more current communication avenue. We could use our various community news outlets to post notices of new information as it becomes available. Postcards could be mailed out to inform residents when the new schedule of events for SCNC are posted as well as the Solid Waste Department's booklet.

Having the options to get our water bills electronically is another area we can explore for savings and online access.

Forms for ACC--whether applying for the Parade of Lights or a Planning department inspection/procedure--should be online, and the ability to fill them out and and submit them should be done as most document processing is done in other areas of the state and country. Digital submissions and processing are a more effective and efficient use of everyone's time.

Number 3—This touches on Economic Development as well as improves services for those of us living here.

I would like to work toward our community having more enhanced Internet capabilities. 

A higher bandwidth and speed at which personal and professional business can be done is not as fast as it should be to support the level of technology most industries need as well as what is needed for school systems (K-12 and higher education).