Three-month reporting delay discovered on Colorado Springs city mobile app

City officials in Colorado Springs revealed Monday that a malfunction in a free smartphone app allowing citizens to report problems delayed delivery of those reports to the city for up to three months.

The malfunction, discovered earlier this month, started in April and delayed the delivery of more than 2,000 reports of downed trees, potholes and other issues.

“With updates to the system over the past couple of months, an IP address was changed,” said Jay Anderson, a city spokesman. “We saw our volume of requests go down a bit, and that was concerning. Requests were not being entered into the internal system. The Public Works Department noticed it.”

Anderson said the system isn’t centralized, so officials were able to recover the requests because they ultimately were sent to individual departments.

Nearly half of the delayed reports were for pothole repairs, the city said.

The period of delay includes the aftermath of a late May snowstorm that left thousands of trees with broken limbs and branches.

The city said the app malfunction has been repaired and an updated version of the app should be ready in a few weeks.

Meanwhile, the city said it is shifting crews to respond quickly to the delayed requests.

“Our administrators are working overtime to make sure all the requests get to the right departments,” Anderson said.

So if you made a request that hasn’t received a response from the city, now you know why.

A possible result of the situation is under a bridge at the Spring Creek drainage channel on Chelton Road, where a mass of tree debris has clogged the channel.

The city’s Forestry Department brought in heavy equipment Monday to move the debris.

“We’ll pile it on one of the banks and haul it away later,” a worker said.

On the opposite bank, the owners of adjacent homes gathered to inspect property damage that they say was caused by flash flooding during storms last weekend.

“This creek has been a problem for years but it got worse last weekend,” said resident Mary Ann Evans. “The flash flooding brought in a lot of the downed tree limbs and branches from the May snowstorm, and with the drainage clogged, the creek flooded our property.”

Three residents pointed out a perimeter fence that had been knocked down and broken, several sinkholes in their yards, flooded crawl spaces and garages, and debris on their property.

“We’ve called the city but have gotten no response,” Evans said. “Someone finally came out to look at the bridge Monday.”

Resident Byron Siddell said his property sustained $20,000 worth of damage.

“We’re trying to figure out how to pay for this,” he said. “Maybe if the app had been working, the city would have known about this and taken care of it, and we wouldn’t be dealing with it now.”

Travis Easton, the director of the city’s Public Works Department, said he was unaware of the situation but promised to investigate as soon as possible.

“I’ll commit to evaluating that and seeing what can be done,” he said.

The work backlog caused by the app malfunction affected different departments in different ways.

Easton said the department should be able to reduce its backlog within several weeks.

Mitch Hammes, director of Neighborhood Services, said the situation will have only a minor effect on his office.

Police said they received 123 of the service requests, most of them reporting traffic issues and the locations of homeless camps.

“And those service requests just passed information along to us,” said Lt. Jim Sokolik. “We didn’t have to make follow-up calls.”

Also on Monday, El Paso County revealed it is responding to an unusually high number of service requests to clear culverts and drainage channels after the weekend storms.

The county said it will clear infrastructure on public rights of way and respond to requests in the order received, but reminded property owners that they are responsible for clearing and maintaining their own culverts.