[Updated] The Town of West Hartford launched a new website on Feb. 27, and one high-tech feature will allow residents to submit concerns to the town electronically from a computer or smartphone.
Screen shot of YourGOV showing the location of reported potholes and other road problems.
By Ronni Newton
Update: As of March 11, both the desktop and the YourGOV mobile applications are now live! Director of Public Works John Phillips would love your feedback, and feel free to includes your comments on this article.
There are many new features on the Town of West Hartford’s relaunched website, and for the forseeable future residents may find “YourGOV,” which allows for potholes and other road problems to be reported electronically, to be one of the most useful.
“This is very new to us, and it’s still in the test mode,” Director of Public Works John Phillips said. “It kind of went public by accident,” Phillips said of the website’s new built-in feature that some residents discovered before it was supposed to go live.
The program is no longer live on the town’s website as it continues to be tested, but it is coming soon.
YourGOV, which connects directly to Cartegraph, the work management system that Public Works has been using for the past year, is a user-friendly way for residents to report common issues such as potholes, vandalism, and problems with street or traffic lights. It will be available as a desktop program, and there is also a free app for both iOS and Android users.
The YourGOV app is available in iOS and Android versions.
Phillips said that one great feature of the mobile version is that it uses GPS to pinpoint the exact location of the problem, so residents don’t even need to input the address. “I encourage you to take a photo, and send that along, too. Sometimes what you identify is not a pothole, it’s road scale or a sink hole,” Phillips said. “A photo will help us expedite our workflow.”
Having all of the town’s road problems plotted via GPS will also help make the department more efficient in addressing problems, but Phillips also urges those who are going to use the app to read the directions carefully so that the problem gets reported to the right department.
Phillips encourages residents to try out the new program – for potholes, grafitti, broken street signs, and other problems. Whether an issue is reported by phone or through YourGOV, it will still go through the Public Works Cartegraph system.
Potholes are a common problem this time of year, and there is even a post on one of the West Hartford Facebook groups encouraging residents to vote for the town’s “worst” road. (At last check, Elmfield and Ridgewood were the leading contenders.)
“We have hundreds to address. We fixed some today but with the melting and refreezing, the patch is probably going to pop right out again,” Phillips said Monday afternoon.
Phillips said the root of the problem is that the town is only able to pave seven to eight of its 218 miles of road each year, and that means each road has to have about a 30-year life cycle. “We have far more than seven or eight miles of road that need repair today.”
“It takes money and resources to make it better,” Phillips said, and it’s just not in the budget.
Crews will be able to do a better of patching in the summer months, but asphalt is still expensive. “It costs $70-$74 per ton to purchase asphalt, and that will repair 1 square foot,” Phillips said. The recent repair of Trout Brook Drive used about 7 tons of asphalt, Phillips said.
Phillips said that he is looking forward to working with YourGOV, and is helping staff adapt their management style to accommodate these types of new technologies. “I’m excited about this taking off and being a great tool for us. I think it will be a very valuable tool for us, and will help us modernize the way for residents to report issues,” said Phillips.
Other changes to the West Hartford website include a “myWH” feature which allows residents to select their “Favorites” from the site and receive notifications whenever changes are made within those categories.
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