Katrina Flagg remembers the call she received in early November.

“A man said he heard that the mayor was giving away clothes. He wanted to know when he could come get his suit,” said Flagg, one of Vicksburg’s two action line customer care representatives. “He started giving me his pants size. I told him the mayor wasn’t giving out clothes.”

Since 2009, Flagg, 29, and Cheryl Cummins, 58, have handled an average of 53 telephone calls a day from city residents and visitors in their small office in City Hall.

Some of the calls are like the one last month, but most, they said, are requests for service or information, mingled with an occasional complaint.

Established in 2002, the action line gives people a central city telephone number to call and report problems, voice concerns or complaints, get information or provide suggestions to city officials.

The phone number is 601-636-3411 and it is staffed by Flagg and Cummins from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. At night and weekends, calls roll over to the city’s gas plant.

“We’re usually the first city employees people talk to,” Cummins said.

“They do an excellent job,” their supervisor, IT director Billy Gordon, said. “I tell them that all the time. It takes a special type of person to handle some of the calls they receive, and they do it very well.”

Service requests come from two sources, the phone and e-mails through the city’s website. The action line also has been available through the city’s upgraded website since August, but Flagg and Cummins said few people use the website to contact them.

“Most people prefer to call,” Cummins said.

The women also get walk-in traffic from people seeking directions to a specific office in City Hall, visitors, or callers who come occasionally to match a face to a voice.

“We have regular visitors,” Flagg said. “We had one man who came in every day and asked for a quarter.”

There was also the man who brought his complaint, including the “evidence,” to City Hall.

“He said that a Waste Management (garbage) truck was leaking hydraulic fluid and left some on his driveway,” Cummins said. “He scraped it up and put it in a plastic bag and brought it to Katrina to show her.”

The man, she said, was unable to prove that the truck left the fluid, and left, taking the evidence with him.

Cummins said the service calls include sewer and utility problems, picking up fallen tree limbs, removing old sofas and appliances, garbage can problems and stray dogs.

“We also get calls from people requesting information about the city or wanting maps,” she said. “And we have people who have visited the city and call and give us their impressions — what they liked, how they were treated.”

The type of service call, she said, depends on the season. Right now, the majority of the calls involve fallen limbs. Calls about sewer and utility problems are all the time.

Last winter, Flagg said, she received a complaint about the heating system at DiamondJacks Casino.

“An old man called and said it was too cold (in the casino) and wanted us to fix it,” she said. “I told him to just bundle up.”

“During the summer, we had a lot of calls about snakes in homes and day cares,” Cummins said. “I’d never given any thought about snakes in buildings. We had such a hot summer that I guess the snakes were looking for any place they could go to get out of the sun.”

When the Mississippi River rose to record heights in early May, cresting at 57.1 feet at Vicksburg, 14.1 feet above flood stage, many callers had different requests.

“We had people asking about cleaning up debris (after the flood),” Cummins said. “During the flood, we had people asking about shelters and housing.”

Calls for service are followed up by work orders that are sent to the proper city department. Calls to remove such items as furniture or appliances require a special order, they said. The women later call the departments to ensure problems are being handled.

“They’re very good about making sure we get the work orders,” said Percy Guy, a sewer department employee. “They keep me busy.”

The bulk of the complaints they receive, Flagg said, involve utility bill problems.

“We’ll get people screaming, ‘my bill was so much last month and now it’s higher this month,’” she said. “We transfer those calls directly to the water and gas office.”

Flagg and Cummins said they applied for the action line spots because they wanted to try something different.

Flagg, who has a 5-year-old son, Ke’Shawn, worked at a convenience store in Vicksburg before joining the city.

Her parents also work for the city. Her mother, Pamela Flagg, works for human resources, and her father, William Flagg, works at the water treatment plant.

Cummins was a teacher’s assistant for 10 years in the Vicksburg Warren County School District, working with kindergartners and first-graders. She also has a family connection with the city. Her 82-year-old mother, Arveta Avant, is the assistant director of the Vicksburg Senior Center.

“I like meeting the public,” Flagg said. “I was doing that where I was, but the atmos-phere here is much better and the hours are better, which means I have more time to spend with my son. And the benefits are better.”