By George P. Hassett

You may not know him but if you live in Somerville he has probably called your home as early as 6:45 a.m. to warn you of snow emergencies, street closings or busted sewer pipes under Somerville Avenue.

His voice has become part of the Somerville way of life and now a tribute to Tom Champion, director of communications for the city and the voice of 90 percent of the 268 mass notification calls known as Connect-CTY, has found its way into cyberspace.

In honor of Champion’s phone notifications, two people he has never met – Somerville residents Georgy Cohen and Katy Aronoff – founded a page on the online social networking site Facebook, whose description reads ‚ÄúWhat Somerville resident doesn’t love getting a phone call from Tom Champion, the guy with the best name in city government? Let us celebrate his civil service!‚Äù

Champion, who is a member of the Facebook group, insists his voice has not reached an iconic level in Somerville.

‚ÄúPeople are reacting to the technology, it’s just an accident of recent history that I’m the one making the calls,‚Äù he said.

Connect-CTY came to Somerville in May 2006 and allows city officials to send communications to 1,000 residents per minute. It is used to notify 25,145 homes and businesses in the city of emergencies, school closings, recent crimes and more. However famous it has made his voice, Champion said any praise for the system should go to Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone.

‚ÄúThe technology would not be here without Joe Curtatone, the way it is used has been determined by Joe Curtatone and it is all a part of Joe’s commitment to expand civic engagement in Somerville,‚Äù he said.

Other parts of that commitment, he said, include 311, the constituent services hotline, and ResiStat, where locals meet with city officials to raise neighborhood concerns and then the officials return later to report on the steps taken to solve the issues.

‚ÄúThe mayor calls it a 360 degree communication strategy. Government can communicate with the people and the people can communicate with government,‚Äù Champion said. 

The most complained about CTY call was for a snow emergency on New Year’s Eve last year when calls first started going out at 6:45 a.m.

‚ÄúPeople were not terribly excited to get a phone call that early on what was, for many of them, a holiday. You try to be respectful and recognize that you’re providing information that is genuinely of value. But also to some extent, I realize I’m invading their personal space,‚Äù he said.

Champion said the city tries to keep the calls under one minute and makes them only when necessary.

Most residents, he said, realize that when they hear: “Hello, this is Tom Champion from the City of Somerville” it is a recording and not a live voice. Journalists in the city, he said, are the few who may for a moment think he is really calling them.

‚ÄúMy family realizes it is not me calling them. Very rarely do I call them and say, ‘Hello, this is Tom Champion from the City of Somerville with an important message,’‚Äù he said.

Another CTY voice is that of Somerville Police Capt. Paul Upton. He said the system allows police to do in a matter of minutes what once took them weeks.

‚ÄúIt’s an electronic neighborhood canvas,‚Äù he said.

He said when police used CTY to notify West Somerville residents last summer that Nicholas R. Chacon — an alleged serial rapist responsible for a rash of attacks in that neighborhood and in Medford — had been arrested, they did it in 10 minutes. In Medford, he said, it took 10 hours.

Still, Upton was disconcerted when he first got a Connect-CTY call at his home. “It was kind of creepy getting a phone call from myself,” he said.