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A look at San Diego's 'Get it Done' app and how the city prioritizes reports

CBS 8 speaks to those who use the app about the response they get as well as the city on how they are handled.

SAN DIEGO — Have you ever filed a complaint on the City’s “Get It Done” app? So many of the emails we get from viewers are about problems in your neighborhood that you report to the city, that never get resolved.

CBS 8’s Anna Laurel tried to find out when will the “Get It Done” app actually get things done. 

She asked specifically about street lights out along Ulric Street in Linda Vista. 

Neighbors we spoke with on Wednesday, who are also on the Linda Vista Town Council, say there are 18 street lights that are out.

Ron Casper is on the council and owns a gym off Ulric. He shot a cellphone video that shows just how dark the street is at night. 

He and other neighbors say it’s dangerous and crime is up in the area. 

One of their friends and father of five, Johnny Ramirez was murdered on a sidewalk under a dark street light in July of 2022.

Veronica Estrada was friends with Ramirez. She’s also on the Linda Vista Town Council. 

“Had that street light been working I'm pretty sure that the person who killed him would not have felt so comfortable in doing that,” says Estrada.

She says she started reporting the street lights on the city’s app after Ramirez was killed. 

That’s when she started talking to her neighbors and found out many had filed the same report on the app, but nothing is fixed. 

“I have no faith whatsoever in it," said Estrada. "When I type in my area and see the reports that have been made, there are so many reports that are over a year old that are still in process.”

CBS 8 reached out to Linda Vista’s City Councilmember Raul Campillo. His office told me they continue to advocate for the area and there is such a huge backlog because of staffing shortages. 

Just last week, CBS 8 spoke with someone from Councilmember Joe Lacava’s office about another street with several street lights out. They also told me staffing issues were creating severe backlogs and delays with city work. 

Back in April, the city said there were 11 electricians to maintain the city’s street lights, with seven vacancies. 

As of October 5, the city says the electrical maintenance team has four electrician vacancies, one electrician supervisor vacancy and three electricians with work-related injuries with some level of work limitations.

Jonathan Widener has been on the Linda Vista Town Council for years. 

He says they are not getting results. 

“We're a city of 1.4 million people and we can't run a city without full staff employees," said Widener. "The City needs to hire people that are experts and start paying more so that people will want to work for the City.”

According to the city’s website, it takes an average of 309 days to fix a street light right now, and close a case. Widener says that based on reports he’s filed, that’s not true. 

“I know some of them have been closed and we'll drive up here to see if they're fixed and they're not fixed.”

When I first started reporting problems with reports not getting fixed on the City’s app back in April, the city told me it’s prioritizing complaints because of such a severe backlog and staff shortages. It said the following:

The prioritization for street light reports specifically considers factors like:

  • Proximity to schools and parks
  • Traffic collisions and crime rate in the surrounding area
  • Historic service levels
  • Underserved communities
  • Traffic volume
  • Clustering of repairs

Veronica Estrada says a dispatcher for “Get It Done” told her reports and issues were not prioritized. 

“I called the city to verbally report it and they told me there was no prioritizing it," said Estrada. 

I asked her- what if somebody got killed, that doesn’t make it a higher priority? She said no. There is no prioritizing reports. Basically what she said was first come first serve.

Estrada believes her friend’s death should be enough for the City to fix the street lights. “If it was their family member I'm sure it would have gotten done already.”

This afternoon the city sent CBS 8 the following statement about the Ulric Street area in Linda Vista:

“The electrical maintenance team was most recently in Council District (CD) 7 in July/ August time frame but were not concentrated in the Linda Vista area. They were last working in Linda Vista in January/ February 2022 and our staff is scheduled to return to CD7 towards the end of the 2022 or early 2023. The team has stops in CD2, CD5 and CD6 before circling back around to CD7.

There are approximately 14 open service requests submitted for the subject area with half of those entered in August 2022. The team will add Ulric Street into the work plan along with the other priority locations in CD7 the next time they are in the area. The last time they were working in Linda Vista they found a variety of different issues from blown fuses, lamps and folks tampering with the circuits.”

The city says on average, since January 1, there are approximately 7,000 Get It Done reports that are submitted each week.

Top 5 Most Frequently Submitted Reported based on the last 90 days:

  1. Homeless Outreach/Encampments – 16,175
  2. Parking – 16,140
  3. Container Requests – 10,296
  4. Missed Collection – 8,459
  5. Graffiti – Public 6,732

Here’s a link that shows the average length of time to resolve issues:

As for parking issues and street repairs. Right now SDPD is in the hiring process for one Word Processing Officer for Vehicle Abatement, two Code Enforcement Officers for Vehicle Abatement, two Parking Enforcement Supervisors, and 12 Parking Enforcement Officers. Promotions were made this week to fill six Parking Enforcement Officer II positions.

For more information on the street repair process, you can find information here: On that webpage you can find answers for the following questions that you may find useful:

  • How is resurfacing scheduled?
  • When will my street be repaved?
  • What if my street isn't on the list?

Homeless Outreach/Encampments reports:

Until September 2021, Get It Done complaints on homeless camps were routed first to outreach, and PATH would respond by sending outreach workers; however, this model was not resulting in timely or satisfactory results due to a shortage of outreach workers. 

Now, Get It Done refers complaints of homeless encampments where people are present to SDPD's Neighborhood Policing Division (NPD), and refers complaints to Environmental Services when people are not present and debris has been left behind. Data from encampment reports are used to inform outreach operations by tracking where high numbers of unsheltered people and encampments are.

Missed Collections reports:

The Environmental Services Department has over 550 budgeted positions and operates approximately 239 active fleet vehicles, with a majority being refuse collection packer trucks. On average, the Department performs over 105,000 service stops a day and over 27 million a year.

ESD has aggressively reduced driver vacancies over the last year with the support of the City Council and Mayor, by implementing a recruitment sign-on bonus and referral program, in addition to increasing compensation for Sanitation Drivers.

Missed Collections have recently increased due to some COVID supply-chain related issues with parts availability for truck repairs. Starting tomorrow, when customers submit a missed collections report, they will be automatically notified if their route is delayed. Customer can check their route status at: https://www.sandiego.gov/environmental-services/collection-status.

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