Paul Bass Photo
Hurley, Hutchings Wednesday in the WNHH studio.
At the corner of State and Olive Streets, a traffic light is failing to change. Which could cause a mess.
Nearby, illegal dumpers are trashing a public parking lot at East Pearl Street and Grand Avenue. And drivers are watching the light turn red, twice, as they wait to turn left onto I‑91 from Hamilton Street.
Meanwhile, recycling bins have gone missing in Macon-Bibb County, Georgia. In New Westminster, British Columbia (Canada), a cemetery tree “lost a bug branch and there’s another one hanging precariously that needs attending to.”
That’s the latest news, according to citizens of those three communities. Their local officials are on it — brought together by SeeClickFix, the New Haven-based company that hosts problem-solving websites for 160 cities worldwide.
SeeClickFix’s Caroline Smith and Ben Berkowitz reported and expounded on those latest news reports Wednesday on “SeeClickFix Radio,” a feature on WNHH radio’s “Dateline New Haven” program.
Berkowitz, Smith
The stories — even those from Canada and the American South — sounded familiar to Kathie Hurley and Ethan Hutchings. They work for New Haven government’s public works and transportation departments, respectively. Their jobs include visiting SeeClickFix each day to read the news from citizens, transfer the information to government coworkers who can act on it, then to return to SeeClicFix to update the public on their progress. They joined Smith and Berkowitz in the WNHH studio for Wednesday’s program.
Hurley wasn’t surprised to hear about the construction debris and other illegally dumped trash at the parking lot at East Pearl and Grand. She remembered citizens reporting a similar problem last year on SeeClickFix. She remembered the names of neighbors who reported it before, and how citizens along with government cleaned up the problem. Now they’ll get started again.
Hurley compared the grassroots organizing for change she witnesses in New Haven through SeeClickFix to earlier waves of activism she witnessed here in the 1960s, with updated technology.
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Today’s episode of “Dateline New Haven” was made possible in part through support from Yale-New Haven Hospital.