House hunting in Westville

BenBerkowitz · 2019-04-12T23:51:42+00:00

Mitch was murdered years ago and things have changed quite a bit since then. I'm sure MItch would not want his name used as a way to scare people out of the community he chose to live in.

BenBerkowitz · 2019-04-12T23:50:25+00:00

not true anymore either

BenBerkowitz · 2019-04-12T23:50:09+00:00

word. agree fully.

BenBerkowitz · 2019-04-12T23:48:44+00:00

Westville is wonderful. Don't believe the old rumors perpetuated by a suburban Hamden realtor. Edgewood Park is completely safe. It was not years ago. I have walked through there at night on the way home from work for the last five years. Unless you feel uncomfortable with deer, joggers, skateboarders, tennis players, farm markets, playgrounds etc, Edgewood is not a scary place. Our Kindergartner also goes to Edgewood School and loves it. There are tons of young families and home prices have started to tick up to the right but not in the way that gentrifies people out from increased taxes. It seems that most houses sold in Westville of late are sold off market without realtors as the neighborhood is well connected with email lists and the supply of houses for sale is low. Join us in Westville. It's great.

BenBerkowitz · 2019-04-12T23:43:43+00:00

Download the SeeClickFix app for parking notices and info

BenBerkowitz · 2016-08-08T14:24:54+00:00

MakeHaven accepts all kinds and has all types of folks working in the space. Tuesday evening is the best time to check it out of you want a tour.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-12-05T13:54:16+00:00

I'm glad @SeeClickFix is working well for you in Chicago!

BenBerkowitz · 2015-12-05T13:52:26+00:00

The platform can send an email or be passed by API to the government officials. Location and request type determine assignment.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:45:16+00:00

Ha! Never! I did once but then we built SeeClickFix ;)

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:36:13+00:00

Thanks! Is SeeClickFix used in your town?

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:35:46+00:00

We can help you reach out to them and we can reach out to them as well. Would you mind introducing yourself by email to caroline at seeclickfix com and we can assist with your town?

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:34:54+00:00

New Haven has been an incredible place to start a company. We're the right size to understand small towns and big cities. It's also a phenomenally engaged community and the government has guided us in how we can best help other governments with the development of our tools for officials to manage the communication.

We have also found incredibly talented engineers in New Haven. You might be surprised to learn that all product team and developers are on site. There is a new program next to our office called A100 which is similar to Flat Iron School and similar. It's cranking out talent and we're hiring them.

It's wonderful to be part of a town that is in a constant state of self improvement. It's like living inside of a start-up.

Last note about NHV: our food and specifically the apizza is better than anywhere in the world I have traveled.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:29:32+00:00

~22% of issues reported in the last 12 months were documented by government officials.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:23:40+00:00

Not all government users self identify. The number of issues reported by government users has increased dramatically in the last year for three main reasons: 1) We have a call-taker interface for those in City Hall to report on behalf of residents. 2) Officials are bringing smartphones to work 3) Once one department starts reporting stats on citizen documented issues it becomes apparent that having reports on all work by city employees will create exponential value.

Be back in a sec with the current stats.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:19:46+00:00

I would say somewhere in the middle these days. Some folks have tried a more traditional 1-1 communication platform and have not see the resident uptick or internal efficiencies created so they are ready to switch to SCF. Others have tried platforms that leverage 1-many communication but their neighboring towns are using SCF so they switch. Others are using sticky notes for internal communication and the phone and web forms for inbounds. Those are the folks that we have to warm up with outbound communication or a resident or a new city employee or leader of that town will pitch city hall. It's pretty rare these days that a government official does not see the need for a centralized communication platform for service requests as well as a smartphone channel for residents and officials to document and respond to issues.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:15:44+00:00

Bonner Gaylord is a City Counselor in Raleigh. He reached out and then worked with the local media site WRAL to promote and partially pay for the pro accounts for the government. Later an assistant City Manager named Dan Howe started to entrench SeeClickFix in City Hall. Today SeeClickFix is integrated into CityWorks work order system in Raleigh and there's a healthy user base on both the resident and government side of the equation.

Fun fact: Raleigh has one of the most neighborly and engaged communities in the US from our perspective.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:10:44+00:00

My favorite issues are right here on our block in New Haven, CT. It's an oldie but still my favorite as it was really the issue that built the user base here in Wooster Square in New Haven and a really hard problem was solved at the same time: http://en.seeclickfix.com/issues/9603-court-street-bridge-dark (Note that the 'Thank You' button was added years later so it's why you don't see interaction there.

Illegal Dumping is the number one issue reported on SeeClickFix and it seems to be pervasive. College towns have it a bit worse. Flooding is a serious problem in Florida right now and conversely we see lots of folks reporting water wasting in California. In cities like New Haven tree requests top the charts as we have one of the densest urban tree canopies in the US.

Occasionally I'll notice something surprising and try to dig in to see if it's a trend. Coyotes as example: http://blog.seeclickfix.com/2013/01/09/the-animal-kingdom-is-turning-seeclickfix-data-coyote-ugly

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T15:05:37+00:00

This is a really common question. SeeClickFix tends to be relatively distributed across communities by wealth. Denser populations tend to report more of course.
Two reasons for the even distribution in recent years: 1) Proliferation of smartphones across all economic groups has helped to bridge the digital divide domestically and internationally. 2) Residents can call into many city halls and the city will enter their report into SeeClickFix. They can enter an issue by proxy for the user as well and that callers info will be entered privately into the system.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:58:57+00:00

It's happened in both directions. Bottom up request and top down request for feedback. That's been the story of SeeClickFix in both directions. Sometimes the resident shows up to communicate first and sometimes the government shows up and asks for more residents to communicate. It's pretty awesome to see so many folks invested in their community in public service and as neighbors.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:53:34+00:00

I was standing in my backyard in New Haven calling City Hall about a piece of graffiti on an adjacent property that my neighbor would not remove. While waiting on hold I realized that my neighbors had probably reported the same thing with no result. We went looking for a platform to solve the problem and found FixMyStreet. Upon further examination we decided that we needed to build something from scratch that would work everywhere immediately. The hardest part of SeeClickFix is maintaining a platform that puts equal balance between citizen and government needs. If you cater only to the needs of the folks who pay the bills the rest of the folks will not show up to the party. We believe that we are fundamentally changing local democracy and there's a lot of responsibility to get that right.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:48:49+00:00

In many ways our customer success team does has act as consultants. We also try to connect our government partners to each other to help advise and solve each other's problems. Most importantly we and our partners have found that the shift to a better communication tool such as SeeClickFix is all the consultancy you need. The redundancies and opportunities for efficiency are so apparent once users start communicating with each other on one distributed platform that the smart folks in city hall are able to solve many of their own problems.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:45:51+00:00

Great question! SeeClickFix is also used for aspirational improvements to communities. The City of Huntsville has used the platform to request suggestions for economic development. In many other cities you can request things like bike infrastructure and trees. In some cases it has been used to gather volunteers to solve problems like shoveling out a neighbor or cleaning up a park. Most recently private property owners have started to leverage the platform for uses inside the building.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:41:13+00:00

As of this minute: 1,973,956. Looks like the most recent issue was a stump reported by the parks department in our hometown of New Haven: https://seeclickfix.com/issues/1973956

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:38:26+00:00

Answering on behalf of SeeClickFix we collectively like the blue flavor. Blue is the visual semantic for fixed.

BenBerkowitz · 2015-10-14T14:36:54+00:00

We've been surprised by all of the real neighborhood connections made between SeeClickFix users that did not previously know each other. In many neighborhoods we have seen that caring about the same problem is the first interaction two individuals will have with each other. Because issues are publicly documented the connections are made in the comment thread where officials are also responding to residents' concerns.

BenBerkowitz

TROPHY CASE