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1:28

Larry Terch

44:56 - 46:25

"I reached out to call service in Anchorage, um, and for less than $350 a month, we could put the utility department through a call center out of Anchorage so that those calls that came through that weren't of an emergency type nature could be answered and emailed to our utility rather than disturbing a utility worker at 1:00 AM."

“I reached out to call service in Anchorage, um, and for less than $350 a month, we could put the utility department through a call center out of Anchorage so that those calls that came through that weren't of an emergency type nature could be answered and emailed to our utility rather than disturbing a utility worker at 1:00 AM.”
Community
Alaska News
Captured at
October 19, 2026

From the transcript

Um, I reached out to call service in Anchorage, um, and for less than $350 a month, we could put the utility department through a call center out of Anchorage so that those calls that came through that weren't of an emergency type nature could be answered and emailed to our utility rather than disturbing a utility worker at 1:00 AM. And, and training those dispatching folks how to properly decide what's important and what's not important in our utility. Um, it is a service that a lot of local companies use out of Anchorage, a switchboard service, so they're very aware of protocol and, and how that works at a very effective, affordable rate compared to an hour of comp time or even an hour of leave time time for every single day you're on call. Those utility workers that are on call that do answer and they go to work, they get 2 hours if they open a laptop and fix the problem from home, or whether they get in a vehicle and drive to the city of North Pole and fix the problem in 2 hours. If they go over their 2-hour call-out time, um, they're on overtime from that point forth.

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