Citizens Disconnect: What Season Is It?

A roundup of our favorite requests for city services in the past week.

With the Citizens Connect app and website, Boston allows its residents to take a picture of a problem, send it to the city along with their precise location, and request help. The site is filled with complaints about sidewalk trash, graffiti, potholes, and dead trees. It also contains the occasional oddity. Welcome to “Citizens Disconnect,” the series wherein we round up our favorite few from the past week:

Wait, What Season Is It?

CD1

Concerned Citizen: “Overflowing [big belly].”

City Response: Closed. Case Resolved (five days ago.)

Anyone else seeing something odd in this photo? Bueller? Was this some kind of Citizens Connect Throwback Thursday affair? Because thank God this is not a recent photo (just a sign of what’s to come.)

We Want FiOS:

CD2

Concerned Citizen: “I’ve got Donnie Walhburg[sic] pitching Verizon FIOS a block away from my house, but I can’t get it because of Menino’s tax fight with Verizon blocked them from giving us service. The aggregate ‘ransom’ residents of our city pay monopoly Comcast each month is probably a lot more than the taxes Menino got on Verizon’s switches. That’s what I will remember as Menino’s legacy.”

City Response: None.

This poster is taking a cue from a front page Boston Globe story making largely the same point (though with less explicit blame laid at Menino’s doorstep.) FiOS operates in the suburbs, but its running a commercial where Donnie pitches it in front of landmarks in Boston proper, where the service doesn’t extend. But—to state the obvious—complaints about cable networking policy seems like a real stretch of the kind of issues the city is looking to resolve over Citizens Connect …

Maybe Charizard Got to Him. 

CD3

Concerned Citizen: “Dead Squirtle the middle of road.”

City Response: None yet.

Obviously this is just a typo and that’s a gross photo of a squirrel, but given the phone identifies Squirtle as a proper noun, it also seems like an obvious autocorrect from a phone that’s discussed the Pokemon character before. Busted, you nerd!

Looks Fine to the City.

CD4

Concerned Citizen: “Sign is upside down, case was closed but obviously it’s not fixed.”

City Response: None yet.

We like that this had been submitted previously and the city ruled it “resolved.” Looks fine to them.

A More Seasonally Appropriate Complaint

 CD5

Concerned Citizen: “Dirty fountain. It is fall, which in Boston means all the leaves are going to fall from the trees — and into this fountain. You must maintain the filters in these city fountains or our large monetary expenditure will be for not. This one is so clogged there isn’t even a fount at which to sit and admire.”

City Response: “Closed. Case Resolved. Done 10-7-13.”

While this person probably explains fall a little too explicitly—they’re probably familiar with it down at City Hall—we ended on this one to remind you that the Big Bellys are not, in fact, overflowing with snow just yet. Thank goodness.