(TNS) \u2014 It will soon become a lot easier to report broken drinking fountains, malfunctioning sprinklers, litter and other problems in\u00a0San Diego\u00a0city parks thanks to an expansion of the popular Get It Done tipster app.<\/p>\n
City officials say they will also add a special quick-response code for reporting illegal off-leash dogs at parks the city operates jointly with local schools \u2014 a\u00a0controversial<\/a>\u00a0problem<\/a>\u00a0that officials have\u00a0struggled<\/a>\u00a0to address.<\/p>\n It will be easier to report parks problems \u2014 and get them fixed more quickly \u2014 because Get It Done now allows tipsters to report 46 specific kinds of park problems, instead of just submitting general parks complaints.<\/p>\n The new feature was added to the Get It Done website in February, and city officials say they will extend the feature to the better-used smartphone app in late summer or early fall. More than 75% of Get It Done complaints come from smartphones.<\/p>\n Another new feature is complaint-specific estimates for how long a fix is likely to take. City officials say this boosts transparency, sets reasonable expectations and may deter people from repeatedly issuing the same complaint.<\/p>\n The city hopes to use data from the new category-specific complaints to make the time estimates more precise and reliable, said\u00a0Conrad Wear, a city program manager overseeing the parks portion of Get It Done.<\/p>\n He said the QR code for off-leash incidents will allow the kind of fast responses needed to disincentivize such activity, which often leads to dog poop on fields where children play.<\/p>\n The upgrades to Get It Done come just after the app marked its 10th anniversary this spring. Since 2016, Get It Done has received 3.5 million complaints, and the smartphone app has been downloaded 275,000 times.<\/p>\n City officials say the tool has streamlined the reporting of complaints from residents about homeless encampments, graffiti, illegal dumping, abandoned vehicles, flooding and many other problems.<\/p>\n The reports are highly accurate because residents take pictures of the problems they see, and the satellite technology in their phones provides the precise locations of the problems to officials.<\/p>\n The city receives more than 1,000 complaints a day, about 700 of them related to city parks.<\/p>\n \u201cGet It Done has dramatically improved city operations over the past 10 years,\u201d\u202fsaid Alex Hempton,\u202fthe city\u2019s chief innovation officer.<\/p>\n A new\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0of parks complaints since the start of 2025 found a sharp disparity between San Diego\u2019s nine\u00a0City Council\u00a0districts, with the lion\u2019s share coming from\u00a0District 2\u00a0\u2013 Point Loma, Ocean Beach and Clairemont \u2013 and\u00a0District 3, which includes downtown, Hillcrest and\u00a0North Park.<\/p>\n The number of complaints from\u00a0District 2\u00a0was 3,255 and the number from\u00a0District 3\u00a0was 2,666. That compares to 664 from\u00a0District 6, which includes\u00a0Mira Mesa\u00a0and University City, and\u00a0District 8, which includes\u00a0Logan Heights,\u00a0Otay Mesa\u00a0and\u00a0San Ysidro.<\/p>\n The leading parks for complaints are\u00a0Balboa Park, some shoreline parks,\u00a0NTC Park\u00a0at\u00a0Liberty Station,\u00a0Ward Canyon Neighborhood Park\u00a0and\u00a0Presidio Park.<\/p>\n The top parks complaints since the start of 2025, in order, have been graffiti, illegal dumping, malfunctioning sprinklers, tree hazards, off-leash dogs, litter, broken drinking fountains, damaged playground equipment, restroom problems, brush management and lighting issues.<\/p>\n Wear said providing estimates of repair times is a key move for the city.<\/p>\n On litter complaints, the city estimates five days. Other estimates are 20 days for sprinklers, 30 days for drinking fountains and 45 days for park equipment.<\/p>\n For restrooms, the city estimates five days for supply problems like lack of toilet paper\u00a0but 15 days for repairs like a broken sink.<\/p>\n The average time to fix a problem overall is roughly 11 days, and half of all complaints are resolved within two weeks, Wear said.<\/p>\n \u00a9 2026 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com<\/a>. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(TNS) \u2014 It will soon become a lot easier to report broken drinking fountains, malfunctioning sprinklers, litter and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-430050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}