Your smartphone can become a tool for Wedgwood neighborhood activism when you use the City of Seattle’s Find It, Fix It mobile app for reporting graffiti.
Free from the City of Seattle: Find It Fix It mobile app
A Wedgwood activist recently wrote on Nextdoor about her walk through the neighborhood, armed with the City’s free Find It, Fix It app. She wrote,
To my surprise, just along 35th NE between NE 70th and NE 86th Streets, I submitted twenty-four graffiti reports of tags on parking signs, traffic signs, fire hydrants, bus stops, curbs and on the fence at the Picnic Place pocket park at the corner of NE 86th Street.
The City’s Graffiti Rangers do an excellent job. I find they clean everything up usually within the week. You just have to report it! Driving along 35th now, everything looks so much better. And, cleaning tags as soon as they appear helps to discourage future tags. If you leave them, it only attracts more.
I know there’s a lot of concern in Wedgwood about crime and policing. I think graffiti is a part of this picture. It degrades our neighborhood. It’s breaking the law.
On that day, I walked both sides of 35th Ave NE between NE 70th and NE 86th Streets. I submitted graffiti reports on a variety of light poles, traffic and parking signs, fire hydrants, bus stops and the fence on our new Picnic Place Morningside Park site at NE 86th, which is City-owned (by the Parks Department) I noticed the street sign bent so that it was unreadable on the west side of 35th NE at NE 86th Street, so I reported that, too.
City of Seattle Pothole Rangers
This reporting is easy to do. With any smartphone, you download the free app from your store, then enter your name, email address and phone number… just once! Then you tap the app to easily begin reporting abandoned vehicles, graffiti, illegal dumping, parking enforcement, potholes, streetlights or other public infrastructure needing attention. It just takes a minute to fill out the information for each report, and snap a picture to go along with it. Hit “submit” and you quickly receive a verification email from the City. The app allows you to easily check back on the progress of resolving your reports.
I know many of us are out enjoying the walkability of our neighborhood throughout the year. If we go armed with our smartphones and the Find It, Fix It app, it’s easy to take good care of our neighborhood at the same time!
Even without a smartphone, you can be a community activist. You can report graffiti by calling in from your home phone, or via the report form on computer.
Scroll down the list to find the kind of report you want to make, which includes graffiti, non-working street lights, potholes, clogged street drains and violations of the 72-hour parking rule.
The activists of the Wedgwood Community Council want to help Wedgwoodians use City resources like the Find It Fix It app. Support for graffiti paint-out on private property is also available. Contact us at info@wedgwoodcc.org