MOSES LAKE — Mark Fancher said an initiative designed to give Moses Lake residents a simple way to report non-emergency problems around the city does work. But not everyone knows about it, -- at least not yet. 

“I've used it, I've had a couple people I know use it. It does work,” Fancher, a Moses Lake City Council member, said during a June 16 workshop. “It is still a work in progress.” 

City officials started the “See, Click, Fix” program in February. Residents can use the tab on the city’s website to report problems ranging from street signs to code enforcement. There’s also a phone app.  

“You can get onto our city website, and you can report a violation,” said Tina Jewell, one of the city’s code enforcement offices. “If you see a violation – the popular example is, if there's a pothole in the street – take a picture of the violation (and add) the address, what the problem is.” 

Pictures can be submitted on both the web version and the app, and Chris Horton, Moses Lake building official and fire marshal, said pictures the more information submitted, the better. 

“If you use and send pictures, please send a zoomed-out picture, so we can see the surrounding area,” Horton said. 

A lack of identifying information makes it more difficult to find the problem, Horton said, citing the example of a damaged sidewalk on South Division Street.  

“Well, Division is a really long road,” he said. “So, when you're (reporting a problem) just get a big panoramic view, or whatever, and then get a closer (picture). It helps us out a lot.” 

The information is routed to the most likely destination, and if that’s not the right department city employees can reroute it.  

“Staff reviews it Monday through Friday, and we will respond to that,” Jewell said. “You can get live updates, you can watch that and say, ‘Okay, staff responded to this violation on this date, they took this action.’ We keep it updated, so you guys can see what is going on with the violation.” 

All reports and questions are archived, and Fancher said that’s a good thing from the council’s point of view.  

“There's data that we can see. We're getting reports regularly now, on how many (requests), what type of response time,” Fancher said. “We can see all the data, so that's important to us.”  

Horton said most users report anonymously.  

“In the past, I heard continually, ‘I called, nothing happened. I called, nothing happened.’ But if you leave your contact information on that, you will be notified, (detailing) what happened and when,” Fancher said. “If you do it anonymously and don't put an email or anything there, you're not getting notified, so just remember that.”