City 311 System, Does it Work For You?
Richmond has had an ineffective 311 system for about 25 years. It has never worked as an effective means of allowing citizens a way to reach city employees. The biggest problem is that 311 acts as a go between. They write a ticket covering your request and in theory, forward it to someone. In practice, many tickets are canceled by city staff, and often no help is provided. 311 acts as a stone wall, blocking citizen access to services we are paying for. There is no oversight to prevent staff from canceling tickets and because of this, Richmond Civic League decided to provide citizens with full access to the City Employee Directory. What’s your experience with 311?
In over 10 years, 311 has never worked for me. I’ve made lots of requests and not one has ever been responded to.
I assume that city workers hit delete, just after each call.
It’s the perfect system as it is, they take no calls, and avoid helping anyone. Why change it?
Right on, BILL147…311 “works” just the way it seems RVA wants everything to “work.”
I stopped using 311 years ago opting instead for direct contact, although direct contact in my district doesn’t work much better than 311.
I recently pointed out a large and growing garbage problem in district 7, emailing all city council members with a copy to Avula’s office. And lo and beshold….someone in Avula’s office then took it upon themselves to file a 311 complaint in my name.
I wasn’t aware a city employee could co-opt my identity to do that – but only momentarily surprised a city employee would do that.