The Code Enforcement office is the sole City Department using See-Click-Fix in Burlington. As the recent news reports indicated, we are testing the system by asking citizens to report Code Enforcement related complaints. Some other communities have adopted See-Click-Fix for all departments city wide.

Burlington Code Enforcement has a priority responsibility for Minimum Housing and Zoning enforcement. For the benefit of citizens to make reports simple, we have partnered with the one employee at the Community Justice Center who takes the lead on graffiti removal. We refer graffiti complaints to her.

We respect everyone’s right to report any type of complaint but there are some complaints that do not fall with our span of control. If you do not wish to have us redirect your graffiti complaint, you can choose not to report it on the See-Click-Fix site and report it directly on the Burlington Police Department web site which has an on-line reporting tool.
http://www.bpdvt.org/LeadinHtml_VtBurlingtonPd/start-report.html

Citizens with specific concerns can contact me directly at 865-7510.
Thank you for understanding.

William Ward
Director of Code Enforcement

It would be helpful to clarify what livability issues fall into your spam of control. This could be done in the media or when you do your own outreach. For example, greenbelt dumping is one that's a clear priority (and gets incredibly fast action). But everything else is not so clear.

I also don't think it makes sense to close issues because of a lack of city-wide participation and/or low capacity. For this to be a meaningful test, learning needs to happen. An issue is closed when its resolved.

The Code Enforcement department offers a drop down list on the See-Click-Fix web site to assist generally with what Code Enforcement can help with on this web tool. The dropdown list on See-Click-Fix includes:
Trash or illegal dumping
Parking on lawns or yards
Sidewalks
Graffiti –(the routing of this issue was discussed in a previous response)

There is a category titled “other” which leaves it to the discretion of the citizen to report issues we might help with. If those “other” requests are determined to be unrelated to Code Enforcement they will be re-directed to the appropriate agency/department, we would ask that citizens honor that request and report future issues to the appropriate department directly. We obviously cannot control what every citizen might repeatedly report, but we will continue to respectfully re-direct the citizen to the appropriate department.

Someone from my office will respond to everything that gets reported on See-Click-Fix. We have 10 employees. There are over 600 Employees in the city. Code Enforcement is not in control of all things reportable in the City of Burlington and we ask citizens for their cooperation.

Burlington’s Graffiti removal coordinator uses only chemicals that are safe to citizens, staff, and our environment. The products used do not work in the winter weather.

The damaged sign has been placed on a work order for cleaning or replacement. The Department of Public works has been notified of the damage to their sign. The Code Enforcement aspect of this complaint is closed.
Thank you for understanding.

William Ward
Director of Code Enforcement