McDowell visits Guilford Metro 9-1-1, praises fast emergency response

U.S. Rep. Addison McDowell toured Guilford Metro 9-1-1 on July 30, walking through the Justice Complex at 1903 Midway St. while the center handled more than 670,000 telephone transactions and close to 400,000 dispatches across Greensboro and Guilford County. The visit put a federal lawmaker inside the county’s 24-hour dispatch hub, where every call can mean a fire truck, ambulance or police car moving in minutes.

City records show the scale behind that work. In a May 12, 2026 annual report, Guilford Metro 9-1-1 said it answered 99.9% of 911 calls within 10 seconds in 2025, a performance the city described as one of the best in the state. The same standard had already shown up in the city’s April 2025 report on 2024, when the center handled more than 701,000 calls and again answered 99.9% of 911 calls within 10 seconds.

Director Melanie Jones framed the year in upbeat terms in the annual report, writing, "The 2025 calendar year was a good one for our department." The report also said the center was in an ongoing transition, a reminder that the emergency communication system serving the county is still adapting even as it posts strong response times.

That operation depends on specialized staffing. The city says new hires at Guilford Metro 9-1-1 go through 14 to 16 months of training before they are fully ready for the demands of dispatch work, a lengthy ramp-up for a job that never closes and must respond to emergencies as they unfold across the county. The city lists Jones as the director of the center, which is housed at the Justice Complex on Midway Street.

McDowell’s stop highlighted that mix of public praise and operational pressure. The numbers at Guilford Metro 9-1-1 point to a center that is already handling heavy call volume while maintaining fast answer times, and the visit gave the congressman a firsthand look at the system local leaders may want to lean on for future funding or policy support.