I love the 911 operators in Portland. They were there when I needed them, at the most important moment of my entire life, and I'll always be in their debt.

And so I read with some interest the other day that the city is thinking about ways to cut down on the number of nonemergency calls that tie up 911 at times. Callers with real emergencies sometimes get put on hold, and the waits can last several minutes. That's bad, especially when the calls that are tying up the lines are just folks who don't where else to phone in their nonemergency city business. Anything that will help eliminate those misplaced calls is a good thing.

The latest proposal is to institute a 311 line, which, as I understand it, would cover all city business other than true emergencies. It's worked in other cities to help keep non-911 traffic off the 911 lines.

I like the idea, but If I'm reading this story correctly, police nonemergency business would get thrown together with City Hall callers who didn't know whom they wanted to speak to, all under the number 311. That concerns me. For us old-timey Portlanders who already know the overall city information number (503-823-4000, which gives out county information, too) and the Portland police nonemergency number (503-823-3333), I'd keep both those numbers active, with the same folks picking them up as the city has now. I've used them from time to time, and they both have worked great. Lumping together every call that now comes into either of them just creates a new bottleneck. The police nonemergency line is already subject to long waits at times, and making those calls wait even longer to wait on somebody looking for a tree trimming permit doesn't seem like the best solution.

If the only real problem here are the callers who are phoning 911 when they shouldn't be, let's give those detail-impaired folks a nice simple 311 for all city business other than true emergencies. But it would be a shame to make every police nonemergency phone call (noisy neighborhood party, blocked driveway, overnight vandalism, etc.) get into a queue with people who are calling to find out where to complain about their sewer bill. If there's any way to do it, have 311 as an umbrella, but keep the two existing nonemergency lines open and separate.