Nice!

Almost two weeks have gone by, and we would really appreciate it if these leaves were picked up. It is disheartening to watch our hard work come undone, as the 2 wind storms we have had since the 16th spread the leaves around again. More than 10 volunteers worked on a Saturday to clean up the park, including the public sidewalk and street up and down Union Street. We do a lot, but we need the City's help. I have posted here, sent a personal email to Parks, and left a telephone message. Is there anything that we should be doing, or something we are doing wrong?

Perhaps this gif of a dog riding a sheep will bump this issue up in priority a bit?

Worth a try!

Leaves are blowing out of the enclosure. This work is going to nothing because no one is doing the pickup.

Extremely poor performance on the part of the city. Part of our work has been for nothing now.

After getting no action from the Parks Department from this posting, emails, or telephone messages, today I called Public Works. They don't want to pick up the leaves because some (but not all) the leaves are from park, and that is the Parks Department's responsibility. They also feel that the leaves should be bagged (though the city doesn't bag leaves when they clean them from other large public spaces). Bagging is not feasible with this volume of leaves.

Public Works is going to look into it, but they "can't guarantee anything".

Is it any wonder that community involvement is so low in New Haven? There is lots of energy and momentum for promoting large-scale projects that will benefit investors, but the effort put into quality-of-life issues in our neighborhoods is, to put in generously, spotty.

We should contact the Register or New Haven Independent to do a story on this and how the city has done nothing.

Isn't this why we have an alderman? What a joke. Just something to add to his resume.

Which Ward is this in, technically? Is this reelected-Hausladen or newly-elected Greenberg? Or still-lingering-in-office Michael Smart?

Don't know, and that is unimportant to me. I have no interest in, and will not respond to political posturing.

The real issue is the degree to which our city departments are responsive to the needs of residents in terms of basic services. We should not have to go to the Mayor or the Aldermen to request services from our city.

The only reason I post here is because it is the communication method the city has chosen. Personally, I don't think it is very effective, because the city's response in general on SeeClickFix is hit-or-miss.

Parks Department workers did a great job picking up the leaves here today.

It seems that the lines of communication are part of the problem, and not just from the community to city departments. A supervisor was very helpful in giving us information about how to better contact the department in the future. Thanks!

Thanks for fixing this issue!

RFM,
Can you elaborate on that more? Parks gets all of these requests so there should be no communication issues on their end.

It seems that no one communicated anything within the department from the email and telephone message I left. A supervisor did see the issue in SeeClickFix, but I think several weeks had already gone by. There was also the issue of non-working equipment, but all the angst could have been avoided if someone had just responded here, and clarified some kind of plan of action.

Ben, this is a flaw with how the city is using SCF. It seems they sometimes actually move on an issue, but they often do not respond here, which takes the "inter" dynamic out of the "interactive" tool, and gives the public the impression they are being ignored. I have even seen the city actually close an issue because it has been pending for a long time, without ever resolving it, which, as you must have seen, looks hugely cynical, and prompts outrage from the people who report problems.

Thanks Robert,

Sounds like an error in internal communication. I guess that's the ugly beauty of transparency. You are going to see the errors when they happen.

Thanks again for taking such good care of the dog park.

Ben