Often I walk around our city and disgusted by vandals tagging our beautiful downtown. Previously I always had good intentions on calling it in, but would often forget. It was not an efficient process. I am pleased to report that it is now a lot easier! The City of Petaluma recently released a New Citizen Request System engagEPetaluma app you can download to your smart phone. Using this app I was able to quickly take a photo of the graffiti from the app and report it to Public Works.
This is how it works.
First download the app to your smart phone – I am using an Apple iPhone so I went to the Apple Store and searched “engagepetaluma” and downloaded the app. When downloaded it takes just a minute or two to set up your account.
After launching the app on your smart phone, click on the large ‘+‘ icon in the bottom middle of the screen. You will get another screen that prompts you to choose which service you are requesting to report. In my case today, I wanted to report graffiti. It then showed my location on the map and it automatically fills the location of where you are requesting the service (So Public Works knows where to find it). It then prompts you to take a photo from your device – which I did and shown below.
Almost immediately I received an email confirming my service request.
A very short time later I received an email indicating that someone from Petaluma Public Works posted the following comment on my service request:
Stephanie Oefinger:
Thank you for your submission, we value your feedback. We will make every effort to address your request in a timely manner. Thank you, Public Works & Utilities Department
Dec 29, 2015,10:18 PM UTC by Stephanie Oefinger (This is visible to Everyone)
Soon after that I received another status update indicating that the work order was “In Progress”. On the website link that is provided in the email I was able to see all the other requests and statuses Public Works is working on.
I encourage everyone to download the engagEPetaluma app and start using it today. It took a few seconds of my day to stop and report something and it was extremely easy to use. I am sure it will take a few days for them to get around painting over this tag, but at least Public Works knows about it and is working on it.