EDITORIAL: The A2(You)FixIt App

THE IMPLEMENTATION OF the A2FixIt program and corresponding app was warmly welcomed in the editorial page of this newspaper. We complimented city staff who worked to design and launch the program which allows people to use a cell phone to take a photo of a maintenance, pedestrian safety or repair issue and transmit the request directly to city staff.

However, there are serious problems which have arisen with the program that need to be addressed.

For starters, A2FixIt should be called the A2(You)FixIt program. Citizens who submit photos of dead animals in the roadway have received messages back from city staff that such problems are the jurisdiction of the county. The messages include the phone number of the county office allegedly in charge of remedying such problems.

This is unacceptable. Rather than expect citizens who pay taxes to call the county, Ann Arbor city staff who process the messages need to do so. They, after all, are being well-compensated in both pay and benefits. The number of city staff with compensation packages of six-figures has increased substantially since City Administrator Steve Powers was hired.

In addition, citizens who submit A2FixIt requests are seeing their requests closed out without explanation and without the maintenance or repair being completed. As a result, a resident who submitted a request for the trimming of vegetation along a path in a local park received a message that the A2FixIt ticket had been closed out. The puzzled resident noted the trimming had not been completed. Then, as others submitted requests for the same maintenance, all of the residents received messages stating that their tickets had been closed out.

The maintenance was eventually completed, but there needs to be a thorough investigation into why A2FixIt citizen requests for repairs and maintenance are being closed without the work having been done.

One explanation for the poor service associated with the A2FixIt requests would be that there is not enough city staff to keep with the volume of requests. Now that repairs and maintenance of the city’s streets, sewers, parks, etc… have become reactive rather than proactive, thanks to the loss of over 300 city staff since 2000, much of the work has been outsourced, including the trimming of vegetation and the care of the city’s neglected urban forest.

We believe A2FixIt is a valuable tool, but needs some fine-tuning to meet the needs of the city’s residents.