The City's Hotline Really Does Work
The City of Boston has a 24 hour constituent service line — 617-635-4500 (which should be 311, but that’s another story).
It works apparently. Particularly when the Mayor calls it: Page 8 of the first batch of Kineavy emails posted on the Globe website has a city employee checking in with Kineavy about a call to the service line from none other thanTom Menino inquiring about the permits for a dumpster in the North End.