Are you tired of your car slamming up and down on poorly maintained roads, the neighbor's barking dog, sick of searching through hundreds of phone numbers just to contact the city? Well, according to former Denver Mayor Hickenlooper Denver's 311 system was supposed to fix all of that and provide the citizens of Denver with exemplary service. Five years later, I would say the 311 system in Denver is nothing special (sometimes it gets the job done, sometimes it doesn't).
Let's start with the good things about Denver 311:
- The online system is pretty easy to use. You can file a vast array of reports from resurfacing requests to abandoned vehicles and everything in-between.
-The online system lets you add pictures, good for helping incompetent city employees understand exactly what you're talking about.
-The 311 call center generally has short waits, outside of the busy mid-morning hours and the staff is generally polite and helpful.
-The 311 system makes it easy to contact the city without looking up hundreds of phone numbers or emailing different departments of the city trying to figure out which one will ever help you.
-Denver 311 is good at helping get annoying potholes fixed. I will give the city credit they did re-surface a large patch of S. Tamarac Dr. when the I reported that a large patch of the road was severely damaged.
-The 311 staff are helpful and will direct you to the correct agency, if the problem isn't within the "City and County" of Denver.
What sucks about 311:
-What used to be a simple phone call to city clerk, regarding tax questions, a business license, or questions regarding vehicle registration, now have to be re-routed through 311. There's no way to directly call any department now, you have to use 311.
-The hold times in the morning are getting ridiculous. You shouldn't have to wait 20 minutes and go through multiple prompts just to get through.
-When there's a row of potholes and you report that there are a row of potholes, I don't really understand why the city only fixes one of the potholes and says that you have to place another "street paving or repair" request to get the other potholes fixed? This happened even though I sent the city a picture of the row of potholes I wanted to be fixed.
-It's really annoying to see that when you report a malfunctioning traffic signal on Havana (a very busy street in SE Denver) and tell the 311 rep. that traffic flow is poor and ask if a police officer or other city official could help direct traffic and are told "of course, we'll contact the police dept. and an officer should be there within 15-30 minutes." Yet, three hours later the traffic light is still flashing red and now the intersection has been blocked because there is a 3 car accident (guess who didn't show up to direct traffic). In addition, it took the city a year to replace a badly worn out street sign (you couldn't even see the letters!). Yep, Denver 311 doesn't always provide "exemplary service" like Hickenlooper and now Mayor Hancock want you to believe.
-The online system's status updates are useless (it will only tell you if your case is "open," "closed (resolved)," or "working." No other details are provided. If you contact the 311 center asking for more information on your case they just say that the case has been routed to the appropriate agency. Would it kill them to have the city official who's handling your case to write a few sentence description of what the city is doing? read more