ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
Those looking to report issues throughout the community to City Hall now have a new tool to do just that.
Last week, the City of Liberal officially launched the new Resident Report Tool, which can be used to share non-urgent concerns, such as potholes, drainage issues, park maintenance needs, and more.
Chief Communications Officer Keeley Moree said she is excited to have the tool up and running.
“Everything actually came together with this project pretty quickly. It’s something I’d been wondering about putting in place for a while, and as I was experimenting with getting other projects set up and completed, I stumbled across a way we could use our existing City of Liberal Web site to be able to have this tool without requiring a new username or login or any of that,” Moree said. “I found it rather accidentally, and I thought it would be a great way for people to submit concerns to us directly and easily to the applicable department head. It all came together in the span of a couple weeks as I’ve continued to look more into our Web site’s capabilities, and this tool is something I know other cities have available, so it’s to be able to have another avenue of contacting us at City Hall.”
Once the discovery of the Web site’s capability was made, Moree said it was easy to put everything together.
“Throughout the years, we’ve all seen situations where a resident could have reported an issue but weren’t entirely sure who to get in touch with,” Moree said. “Maybe a road sign has been hit by a car, and we want to make sure that gets fixed quickly. Or maybe something happens on a weekend or in an area of town where city crews didn’t go by on a particular day, so this is a way for those types of issues to get addressed more quickly. Or maybe you’re out on one of the tennis courts in the evening and notice a light or two isn’t functioning. This tool also allows residents to have a role in taking care of the city, which is always good. I’m a firm believer in communication and as I’ve said at past town hall meetings, if we don’t see something or know about something, we can’t fix it. This tool makes it very easy for people to let us know if there’s something that needs taken care of, and the form is quick and easy to fill out.”
Moree said the form is very user-friendly.
“The form is on the City of Liberal Web site, cityofliberal.org/report. There’s no sign-in credentials that need to be created, all the reporter has to do is give some basic information like name, phone number and e-mail address (if they have one), and then you choose the option that’s closest to what you’re needing to report, and then you give a brief description of the problem and where it is,” Moree said. “And the more details you can give, the easier it will be for city crews. On the back end, it will generate an e-mail to all of our administrators as well as the department head(s) directly in charge of that area – i.e., if it’s a pothole, the request will get sent to the Streets Director and all of the administration. And the request goes to multiple people in case there’s someone who ends up not seeing that e-mail, so we want to be sure all bases are covered.”
And the tool is already seeing use, Moree said.
“We’re really excited people are already using it. It’s been live for not quite a week now, and we’ve already had about a dozen submissions. Most of those submissions were about things needing fixed, but some of them were also ideas for future projects, like installing children’s swings at one of the parks,” Moree said. “Another submission was about a fire hydrant that was leaking because it had been struck by a vehicle – it wasn’t gushing water, but it was leaking enough to be noticeable, so a citizen submitted that to us and it was taken care of later that day. I know we’ll probably get some general complaints among our submissions and maybe some neighbor versus neighbor conflicts, and we’ll take care of what we can. It’s great to see people already using it and knowing it’s available for use, and it seems to be pretty user-friendly, which is what I was going for when I was designing it, especially for phones. It really has been a great tool, and I feel like the community is embracing it as a way to help keep in communication with City Hall. I know a lot of people get in touch with us on our social media pages, which is great because I follow up with anything that comes to us through there, but this is a more direct method of communication to the person(s) in charge.”
And that initial positive response, Moree said, is making her and city staff happy.
“I think it shows our community really cares and want to be able to help make the town better, which is great, and my role is to help facilitate all of that,” Moree said. “The great thing about this tool is all of our administrators are seeing it, so even if there’s not a specific maintenance need, it could be a potential project that’s already been talked about, and we could start brainstorming ideas of how to make it happen. This tool is another great avenue for people to share their thoughts with us so we can build the community everyone wants. I think this tool is going to be a great way to continue building those relationships with the community, because we want everyone to know we do care and we want to keep everything up and maintained. I also hope this tool helps continue to build trust among the residents and the city crews who work so hard every day in what they do, because they are always willing to go above and beyond for this town. This tool will be great for everyone overall.”
Overall, Moree said, she looks forward to seeing the tool’s continued use by the community.
“This is a tool other cities have had in place for a long time, and it’s something we probably should have had in place much sooner,” Moree said. “The great thing about this tool is I was able to create it through our existing Web site and using what I already had in place, and it comes at absolutely no extra cost to either the City of Liberal or the residents. It also took a very short time to put everything together, which was also great. We’re really excited to have this live and in front of the community now, and I just encourage anyone and everyone to send in an issue if there’s something they come across.”
