ESCONDIDO—REPORT IT!

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By Caleb Trainer
 

April 28, 2011 (Escondido) – Fixing potholes and cleaning up graffiti is a dirty job that City officials here look to accomplish more efficiently with the help of residents and a hi-tech solution called “Escondido, Report It!” View a video on CitySourced.

 

On Wednesday at 3 p.m., just prior to the Escondido City Council meeting, persons interested in learning how they can help keep the City tidy will participate in what officials are calling “Download Day.” The instructional gathering will be led by tech-savvy staff from Freedom Speaks, the Los Angeles company that created CitySourced, the smart phone software application residents will use to report pothole and graffiti problems to City Hall.

 

Seating for the event on Wednesday is limited so Escondido residents wanting to attend are asked to call 760-839-4631 by Tuesday for a reservation, according to Joyce Masterson, assistant to the city manager.
 

The brains behind the CitySourced program application, customized and dubbed “Escondido, Report It!” for use here, are Escondido native Jason Kiesel and partner Kurt Daradics. At the time city officials were first evaluating the phone ap, they didn’t make the connection that Kiesel, a collegiate-level long jumper and standout student at Escondido’s San Pasqual High School 20 years ago, was a local boy making good. (See ECM's profile on Kiesel.)
 

“We knew about it after we made the decision to get it,” said Mark Becker, director of information systems for Escondido. Becker said he began looking into CitySourced after City Manager Clay Phillips referred him to a magazine article about cities using the software in a manner that Phillips thought could benefit Escondido.
 

The annual licensing fee to use CitySourced cost Escondido just under $12,000. The city also paid Kiesel’s company another $2,000 for initial setup and customization of the software.
 

The City currently offers residents the choice of calling to report potholes (760-839-4349) and graffiti (760-839-4OFF), using an email form on the City’s website at https://www.escondido.org/request-repair-report-problem-form.aspx or making the report in person at City Hall.
 

And while the company says its CitySourced product can save anywhere from $5 to $9 per report vs. the costs of processing phone calls or getting the information in-person, Becker said the real savings should be in improved efficiency.
 

“It’s a map-based system and our ability for a faster response and its accuracy of reporting were the primary reasons” the City decided to purchase it, he said. Becker said the smartphone ap is being made available in addition to the other existing means for reporting.
 

Before the City can take full advantage of the CitySourced ap, Becker said there’s still work to be done to integrate with the City’s computer system. That should be done in a matter of months, Becker said. Once seamlessly operating , the reporting process from the time in which an observer reports from their smartphone a photo of a pothole or graffiti, through the time the repair or cleanup is logged at City Hall as complete, will be fully automated.
 

“For the public, it’s the ease of reporting,” Becker said, explaining how the CitySourced application works. He explained that once downloaded, “Escondido, Report It!” allows someone with a smartphone to snap a photo of either a pothole or graffiti, add comments using the text capability of the phone and send all of it, including the exact location, to City Hall. The City, in turn, will message residents regarding progress on the reported problems. The software also has other features, including a newsfeed linked to the City’s website. And there’s no cost to down load the phone ap, Becker said.
 

With yet another way to report repair and cleanup problems throughout the city, what will “Escondido, Report It!” mean for the crews on the streets that actually do the work?
 

“We talked with CitySourced about it and they said to expect an increase in reports initially, but (the volume of reports) would settle back down,” Becker said.
 

That might be good news for City maintenance crews as they currently receive more than 600 requests monthly for graffiti cleanup and as many as a couple hundred for street repair. In March alone, there were 797 graffiti-related reports and 107 for potholes, according to Rich O’Donnell, the City’s deputy director of maintenance and operations. And O’Donnell points out that since a hotline or walk-in request frequently includes multiple repair locations, the report numbers only tell part of the story.
 

O’Donnell said he expects an increase in the workload as a result of “Escondido, Report It!” but also notes there will be a tradeoff by some who otherwise would use the telephone hotline or the City’s website email.
 

In early testing of the CitySourced system O’Donnell said there are “still some wrinkles to iron out. We need to learn how to use it more efficiently.” He said the software application doesn’t give his crews a “pinpoint” location. “We’re finding that our staff has had to spend time in some cases to find where it is. There’s a little more time used up in the field, but it’s too early to tell yet if we can work through it,” O’Donnell said.
 

Kiesel offered a technical explanation. The CitySourced ap depends on the Global Positioning System (GPS) to identify a reported position. In most cases, Kiesel said, “The GPS coordinates are captured at the time the photo is taken. There’s an inherent error in GPS of between 10 and 30 feet. A number of factors affect accuracy. Clear line of sight to the sky with minimal interference from buildings or power lines provides the best reading.”
 

Keeping in mind the challenges ahead for using the phone ap, O’Donnell said, “We’re excited about it because it’s an opportunity for citizens to be involved. We want to know what’s out there even if we can’t get to it right away.”
 

The City assigns two employees with two trucks to clean up graffiti. O’Donnell said the City formerly cleaned up graffiti by the day after learning of it. But lately it’s been taking four to six days. Of the 797 reports in March, 722 were completed within 30 days, generally in the order they were received, he said.
 

The City’s pothole crew usually consists of two workers and a truck. During the rains, that number is increased, O’Donnell said. They, too, respond to reports in the order received unless a safety hazard is involved. Rains in January contributed to 299 pothole service requests, he said. It typically can take more than a week to fix the problem, according to O’Donnell. But, concurrent with the introduction of “Escondido, Report It!” the City is working on “strategies to get the work done quicker in the coming year,” he said.
 

As for using the CitySourced ap to chronicle problems other than potholes and graffiti, Becker said, “We will add (others) once we get a handle on it. Right now the ap gives you a choice of graffiti or potholes. If someone were to send a photo of an abandoned car, for example, we’d deal with it, but it’s not yet part of the reporting system.”
 

The CitySourced application has been customized for other clients, Kiesel said, to tackle everything from snow removal to identifying the most popular and safest locations for construction of bicycle and pedestrian paths.
 

And Kiesel said to expect more improvements to the CitySourced ap in the coming months.
 

“We’re constantly building out new features. We have some real exciting ones that are coming out at the end of June,” he said. Kiesel left it at that.

 

 


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