KYLE — The city of Kyle is launching a new non-emergency request and notification system called Kyle 3-1-1, where residents can easily share their day-to-day concerns with officials from the city.
According to Joshua Chronley, the assistant director for administrative services for the city of Kyle, the budget for the 3-1-1 program came partially from an initiative in this year’s budget, “for some general enhancements.”
“So, this really should be a huge benefit to citizens and there really isn’t a major cost associated with this initiative,” said Chronley.
“It’s essentially a simple way for residents to contact the city via either a phone number, a website or a mobile application,” explained Chronley. “Our goal here is to help people with their everyday concerns. So, fallen tree branches that have landed in the roadway or blocking [a] sidewalk or an inoperable vehicle that’s been left at the front of the neighborhood or in a side street that’s blocking the way. The potholes that they find on their commute or, of course, if they ever see anything like graffiti or litter, so we can get those taken care of right away.”
One of the features of the project is the ability to track the status of a service request.
“Say [a resident] reported a pothole, they’ll get notified as soon as that pothole crew gets assigned to the task and then, once the pothole has been repaired, they’ll get an email closing it out, letting them know that we have addressed their concern,” said Chronley. "Our goal is to hopefully increase satisfaction and increase transparency through those mediums.”
“This is just another area where we felt we could streamline citizen interactions and also provide direct feedback to our residents in real time updates, just to further increase that transparency and hopefully build trust between city forces and our constituents,” he said.
The non-emergency line was designed to be easy for anyone and everyone to navigate.
“We’re going to be able to make it so that our residents have multiple ways to report their concerns or get in touch with their city representatives,” he explained. “They’ll have one place to call and we’ll be able to put them in touch with the right people, instead of having to call maybe several departments in order to figure out who’s responsible for a specific function and then, again, increasing that transparency.
While most of the “heavy lifting” happened within the last three months, said Chronley, the Kyle 3-1-1 project has been in the works for approximately a year. Its official launch date was March 11 or 3/11.
Residents can download the Kyle 3-1-1 app online. For more information about the city of Kyle’s 3-1-1 program, visit bit.ly/3Xt6DhO.
