Illustration by Tabitha Walters
No need to look out the window—just sign up for A2 Fix It, the app and website where residents report problems online. After a mid-January snowfall, most of the complaints were about people who hadn’t cleared their sidewalks.
According to public works communications specialist Robert Kellar, A2 Fix It fielded 12,300 online reports in 2024. Year-round, the seasonal “snow/ice removal” was only the tenth most popular category, tied with “park maintenance” at 4 percent. The most common was “other,” a broad category that can envelop everything from trash left in an alley to overgrown lawns; that comprised 19 percent of complaints.
Among specific reports, the top categories were missed recycle pickup, at 9 percent; a tie between streetlight repair and regular trash pickup, both at 8 percent; and street tree maintenance at 7 percent.
Related: A2 Fix It
See, Click, Fix
Kellar says reports don’t always hew to a specific heading. “While something may be submitted under a particular category, it may be a different issue,” he emails. “For example, a pothole repair may be someone reporting a deteriorating road segment. Streetlight repair is sometimes used by folks to request a new streetlight.”
While regular app users know some of the reports might seem unusual—like the person who wanted to eliminate street parking spaces so they could drive faster—the city declines to categorize them as such. “We would never describe any requests as ‘unusual’ because we do not want to make fun or light of anyone’s request,” Kellar says. “A2 Fix It is very transparent, and people are free to look up all the requests in the tool and make judgments for themselves.”
Keller adds that the app isn’t the only way that complaints can be registered; departments still take reports by phone for issues such as water, noise, dead animals, and parking violations. The list, of course, is online: scroll down at a2gov.org/services/pages/report-a-problem.aspx.
Related: Mind Your Step
