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WHEELING -- An improved, mobile-friendly upgrade is being unveiled on Wheeling's 311 site as part of tweaks being made to the city's online non-emergency incident reporting system.
Wheeling Councilman Ben Seidler said the improvements have been in the developmental phase over the past several weeks.
Earlier this summer, Seidler told fellow members of Wheeling City Council he planned to spearhead an effort to bring some needed upgrades to the city, as many constituents had indicated concerns reported through the 311 system were not being addressed in a timely manner.
The Wheeling 311 online request tracking system can be found as a link from the city's official website. The system was designed for citizens to be able to report things like areas where potholes need to be repaired, missed trash pickups, vandalism, noise complaints, animal issues, suspected drug activity, complaints about abandoned vehicles and blighted properties, and other non-emergency issues.
"I've recently spoke about some of the gaps with this system and also some of the gaps with our adoption of it internally within the city," Seidler said. "I want to say we've made a good bit of progress on this. Over the last couple of months, I've been working with our department heads to really understand how we want to use this moving forward, and I've been working with the owner of the software company that makes that system to communicate our needs and what some of the gaps are."
Wheeling's 311 system debuted in January 2019, but shortly after Seidler took office at the beginning of July this year, he stressed that there were too many unanswered requests being reported, and there were improvements that needed to be made to the online system itself. Since then, the software provider has been working on upgrades to the site.
"The software company has been very receptive," Seidler said. "In the coming weeks, we're going to see new changes to that system, so when you go to www.wheelingwv.gov/311, you're going to see a mobile-friendly site, which is a big win. People are going to be able to log in and use it from their smartphones. It's going to move a lot faster, and there's going to be a lot of enhancements on the back end to make it more effective for the city to manage the tickets that come in."
Seidler indicated the 311 system's new mobile upgrade should be live in the coming weeks.
"I've been working with them to see their updates with this," he said. "They've really picked up the ball and ran with it so far, so that should be visible within the next couple of weeks. So I'm thankful to those folks as well."
In terms of the existing 311 requests or "tickets," a recent count showed a total of 199 open tickets, which was an increase in usage from two week's prior, Seidler noted, but those numbers included 27 vehicles reported to be in violation of city code for being illegally parked on properties. Property owners with illegally stored junk or abandoned vehicles began receiving notices that the vehicles needed to be moved or the city would be towing them.