Boston Globe is out in front when it comes to hyper-local so we were excited to see their really nice looking implementation of SeeClickFix in their Newton and Wellsley Sites: http://www.boston.com/yourtown/wellesley/seeclickfix/
and http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/seeclickfix/
The Boston Globe was the first big paper to have a pothole map using SeeClickFix so we are excited to see the other types of issues that get reported in the Boston Area when they open up the idea to graffiti reporting and other issues in the public space as well.

Brockport is a College Town home to SUNY Brockport and as such their local paper is their College Paper.
SeeClickFix met with Amanda Seef, Executive Editor of the Stylus, at the College Media Advisors Conference in NYC a few weeks ago and since then they have been working to include SeeClickFix in their site.
Snippet from the article,
""I think it's a great thing for residents of Brockport," Off-campus representative Eric May, said. "It's a great initiative, and I would highly encourage everyone to use it."

Other uses of the site are for parking issues, recycling problems, needed or improved pedestrian pathways and sidewalks, crumbling or deteriorating architecture, such as stairs and unsightly graffiti or housing in residential areas.

Users on the site can create "watch areas," where an e-mail will be sent to those registered when a new issue is posted. Many officials create watch areas in order to track residents' complaints.

As of Monday, there were four complaints on Brockport's page of SeeClickFix, which can be accessed through The Stylus Web site at www.thestylus.net/fix, or by going to www.SeeClickFix.com and entering Brockport, N.Y.

Of the four complaints, two are potholes, one is a bump in the road and the last is on-campus parking. One pothole, which is reportedly located on the corner of Main and Monroe, has been identified as a sunken catch basin. So far, three users have requested the disturbance to be fixed.

Harry Donahue, the director of the Department of Public Works (DPW) commented on the logged item on the Web.

"Looked at the SW corner of Monroe at Main and there is no pothole," he wrote on the site. "There is a catch basin right at the curb that has sunk down, which I will put on list of catch basins to fix.""

Read the whole thing here

We have always felt that SeeClickFix is a valuable tool for community members to anonymously voice complaints about issues which they might traditionally have been nervous to go to the police about. This is the first arrest that has been directly attributed to the SeeClickFix community and we're really excited that the New Haven Police Department is making good use of the data.



Here's a link to the issue: http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/3998


See-PRESS RELEASE-

NEW HAVEN POLICE WORK CLOSELY WITH COMMUNITY TO ACHIEVE SUCCESSFUL NARCOTICS STING OPERATION

NEW HAVEN- Today, members of the New Haven Police Department Tactical Narcotics Unit conducted an investigation into street level drug dealing in the Eld Street area of the city. Eld Street residents were instrumental in the investigation by keenly observing suspicious activity in their neighborhood and promptly reporting their observations to the police via the website SeeClickFix.com. Armed with the information received from Eld Street residents TNU detectives conducted surveillance, and a subsequent "sting" operation in the aforementioned area. At 2:31 pm, at the corner of Orange Street and Eld Street, detectives interrupted a street level heroin transaction. TNU detectives arrested both the alleged dealer Nelson Garcia (DOB 11/30/78) of 154 Canal St. and the buyer, Joseph Mazzucco (DOB 2/17/74) of 60 Rock Rd., North Haven.

Detectives seized ten (10) packets of heroin from Mazzucco. Subsequently, Mazzucco was arrested for Possession of Narcotics, Possession within 1500 feet of a school, Possession of drug paraphernalia, Operating a motor vehicle with a suspended license, and Failure to obey a traffic signal. Detectives seized $1,060.00 from Garcia, as well as a 2010 Toyota Camry, and charged him with Sale of Narcotics. Both were remanded to the Union Avenue detention facility.
[END]
No photographs are available at this time.


Jessica A. Mayorga
Director of Communications
City of New Haven
203.946.7660
203.627.4224 (mobile)
jmayorga@newhavenct.net
www.cityofnewhaven.net

Aside from embedding SeeClickFix in her campaign site here.
She has also released a statement to the press with the title
"Mayoral Candidate Opens Access to New Website
to Report and Fix Neighborhood Problems"

Ray says she had already promised map-based reporting systems such as the one used by the Lancaster Police Department,
which reports on police activities by district. “But this is an even better tool,” said Ray, “because SeeClickFix is a two-way street
and more. It’s not just the City reporting out to the citizens – it gives citizens a key role in making improvements happen and in
building neighborhood influence.. This tool empowers citizens to take direct action, instantaneously and easily, to alert each
other, the City, utility companies, state government, and private businesses to issues that diminish our quality of life in York. It
allows all of us to engage in problem-solving, and it allows citizens to monitor the City’s performance. Finally, as icing on the
cake, it’s free.”
Ray says that during the several-month demonstration period, she will collect the “Click” reports and relay them to the
appropriate problem-solver. She says she hopes that the City will establish a “watch area” on the SeeClickFix site, and she will
also encourage York’s newspapers to embed a MetroYork or even York County widget in their own websites. “I hope that many
residents and business people will become ‘SeeClickers’ and our governmental units will make sure that they are among the
‘SeeFixers,’” said Ray.

Here's an image of the press release:

From the article:
"Within 24 hours of a posting on an interactive Web site(*seeclickfix.com), more than 100 people attested to the need to fix the situation, or at least warn people of the angled rail crossing.

The state Department of Transportation has heard the complaints and is expected to have a report on it next month, according to its spokesman, Kevin Nursick."

Read the article here

This is not the first SeeClickFix issue that has tipped off a newspaper to a good story and it reaffirms our belief that SeeClickFix is also a valuable tool for news leads.

In this article in the Morningside Post Courtney Doggart writes,
"The beauty, in my mind, is that it recreates Jane Jacobs’ concept of eyes on the street in a way that increases accountability on both a personal and public level. If one saw a problem before, it would be easy to either dismiss it (surely someone else has reported this) or simply not make the effort to call 311 in the despair that it is a complaint into an unresponsive void. With SeeClickFix’s widely available public record of problems noted by concerned citizens, it becomes difficult to ignore the many clamoring voices. Problems can be more easily identified, and solution-focused dialogue can take place among those living in the affected areas."
This is not the first time Jane Jacobs has been referenced in conjunction with SeeClickFix. Jane Jacobs is most famously known for her 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” If you're interested to read more about Jane Jacobs, check it out here.

From The article:
"In San Francisco, Phil Bronstein, the Editor-at-Large of Hearst Newspapers Division, is a big fan of SeeClickFix and is planning to use the mapping widget on SFGate.com. Kevin Skaggs, Executive Producer of SFGate.com, said that they have been preparing a collaboration with SeeClickFix since Bronstein blogged about them last year and will use the widget in a few months when they roll out their hyper local Chronicle sites, much like the New York Times' local blogs.

"SeeClickFix gives the Chronicle a way to bring ChronWatch online," said Skaggs. "SeeClickFix adds another way for the community to get involved in local media outlets."

Read it here

The SeeClickFix map was just embeded in www.urbancityarch.com.

Adam Mizrahi writes on the post introducing SeeClickFix that, "
My goal is to keep an eye on Downtown Miami, Brickell, and the surrounding areas. Hopefully people from the urban areas of Miami will contribute to this growing tool. Furthermore, I hope other blogs in Miami begin using this wonderful tool. This will allow enough people to collaborate to bring credibility to the program and allow city government and institutions such as the Downtown Development Authority to join in. To me this seems like the perfect tool for the City of Miami and groups such as the DDA — Mayor Manny Diaz has always been in front of sustainable, urban, transportation, and technological issues.

This tool seems to be a perfect fit for the recently created Downtown Ambassador Program by the DDA. This programs consists of a team of 6 full-time Ambassadors who are trained to provide hospitality assistance, to be alert for crime prevention services and to report service issues to local government agencies. SeeClickFixwould be ideal in assisting to fullfill a few of the programs goals — more specifically it could assist with three of the programs five listed goals by facilitating communication between citizens and the ambassadors:

* Respond to calls concerning specific incidents (suspicious persons, tourists with special needs, graffiti, panhandling, litter)
* Report crime, code enforcement violations, solid waste and other concerns to appropriate agencies and assist in mitigating these from escalating
* Complete daily incident reports on issues attended to and follow-up with other agencies to resolve problems
"

SeeClickFix, Transportation Safety Innovation of the Year, Tackles Tomlinson Bridge "Disaster"

Check out the article here: http://thecityfix.com/see-click-fix-repeat/

Good Stuff.
Thanks Guys.

Many Philadelphia Clickers awoke this morning to responses from their city government providing work order numbers for the issues that were reported on SeeClickFix through Philly.Com.

Some issues have already been fixed. Here's one of the comment's from Philly 311:
Reported By:
Philly 311

Comment:
Updated 3/14/09 7:05am: The Streets Dept has received the request
Updated 3/16/09 11:06am: The Streets Dept has received the request and created a work order of type: Potholes.
Updated 3/16/09 1:08pm: The Streets Dept reported that the pothole was repaired on Mar 16 2009

View this issue here:
http://www.seeclickfix.com/issues/3564

Good Stuff Philly!

Check out the story from a SeeClickFix paper:
http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/03/web_innovation.php

A few weeks ago SeeClickFix hit Western PA on WPXI.com. This week its Eastern PA on Philly.COM.
To put a SeeClickFix Map in your site go to http://www.seeclickfix.com/widget or create one from your watch area.

Check it out the map on Philly.com here

This in from New Haven City Hall,

"During the week of February 16 - 20, 2009 the School Resource Officers
were Assigned to the Traffic Enforcement Unit where they were assigned
to Enforce Motor Vehicle Violations reported to the New Haven Police
Department by SeeClickFix. Operation ClickFix resulted in:

(38) Infractions, (15) Written Warnings, (9) Parking Violations, and
(2) Vehicles
Towed."

The New York Times released their first 5 hyperlocal sites today named simply "local".
SeeClickFix rss feeds are embedded in a few of the sites.

Check Out the Times Press Release Here

Also, check out one of the sites here
You can find SeeClickFix issues on the lower right.

Katie Harrison is running for Alderman in New Haven and she added the SeeClickFix widget to her site. Appropriately placed Katie:
http://katieharrison.net84.net/

https://author.voanews.com/spanish/we-media-04-2009.cfm

Anybody want to help translate SeeClickFix into Spanish?

Jeff was kind enough to make a little photo gallery from issues on SeeClickFix.
Check it out: http://www.seeclickfix.com/gallery
There's some fun stuff. Add a photo to your issue to add some extra credibility and documentation!