BY LEE REINSCH
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
DE PERE — The city of De Pere’s new community engagement app is here, and with luck, it will make life in De Pere easier for both residents and city employees.
The app, called “De Pere Report It,” launched formally last week.
As of Sunday night, it appeared that 61 issues had already been resolved.
The purpose of the app is to take mobile phone users directly to the city website without punching in addresses in a browser and to enable them to notify the city of their concerns, from streetlights that are out to illegal activity.
It also enables city residents to pay their bills online, sign up for summer programs, get road construction updates and find out if recycling is being picked up this week.
It’s not meant to be for reporting emergency situations.
The app provides a new way to “connect with residents and increase civic engagement in the community,” De Pere Mayor James Boyd said.
The app can be downloaded to any iOS or Android device.
The information can be found via desktop computers at the City of De Pere website, www.deperewi.gov/reportit.
When users open the app, they’ll be given the chance to sign in or register for an account.
They will also see a landing page with De Pere’s logo on it and the message to “please notify the City of your concern by pressing the ‘New Request’ button below” and follow the screen prompts.
But before they do go to log a new request, it might be useful to check out the “Requests” button, where they can see recent requests made by others.
Maybe someone else already reported the problem.
For example, if their intent is to report that the streetlight at Mt. Olivet and Mayfair is burned out, they will see that it’s already been reported and that it’s been assigned to a city employee to handle.
And they will see that someone reported recent storm damage to two trees in Rusk Park, and that that, too, was assigned to a city employee to take care of. In that case, the person took photos of the two trees.
The user can find out that someone reported the flashing crosswalk sign on the west side near the bridge wasn’t working and follow the conversation between De Pere City Engineer Eric Rakers and Maintenance Supervisor Thomas Blohowiak.
Rakers said in a message to Blohowiak that they reviewed the push buttons on the light and concluded the south-facing side button wasn’t working.
“Staff replaced the battery and one wire connection, and the sign is working,” Blohowiak said in his response, adding that they would monitor it to see if they needed to budget for a replacement.
The city hopes that being able to see if someone else raised the matter that the user wants to bring to the city’s attention will go a long way toward reducing the number of duplicated items and thus reduce the number of employee hours (and dollars) spent chasing things down.
City Administrator Lawrence Delo said not having that cross-reference capability was cited at a common council meeting in December as one of the biggest drawbacks to the city’s former online community engagement platform.
Without a name or contact information, staff couldn’t ask follow-up questions and was often left hanging.
Without the ability to communicate with the complainant, or tell them that the problem is being addressed or why it is being addressed in a certain way, anonymous complainants often continue to complain about the same thing, he said.
Or, they complain on other boards or to other departments or get other people to complain about the same issue when city staff may already have addressed the issue.
Delo gave the example of an anonymous letter sent to the city.
“We would like to get back to the person and say we are addressing it (an issue) this way, but we can’t, and so this person calls somebody else to complain about it in the meantime,” Delo said at the Dec. 19 meeting.
If a complainant thinks their complaint has been ignored, they will probably keep looking for help.
“They think nobody is dealing with it or that it’s not being handled in the way they wanted it to be and we don’t have the ability to talk to them and tell them that this is the reason it’s being handled the way it is,” Delo said. “They just make their own assumption about how it should be handled and so then they start grinding out more complaints” under a variety of categories available on a drop-down menu.
He said in most cases, the city would prefer to deal directly with the complainant instead of their talking to multiple city employees in multiple departments about the problem.
If app users don’t see their issue raised by someone else, they go to the “New Request” button, where they’ll be asked if they want to include an uploaded photo, take a new photo or not include a photo.
The app includes an option for those wishing to not have their names made public.
Plans originally were to scrap that possibility entirely, to eliminate the ability for troublemakers and chaos agents to use the site to take out their anger with the city or get revenge on neighbors.
But at the Dec. 19 meeting of the common council, some alderpersons raised their concerns that some residents wouldn’t report violations or concerns out of fear of retaliation.
Alder Amy Chandik Kundinger encouraged the group to think outside the box.
“The whole reason for it is to be able to stop behavior that is poor, but not to encourage cattiness,” she said.
She said she believed they would come up with a method within the form filing process that “minimizes the poor outcomes, but protects those who are fearful of retribution.”