{"id":407,"date":"2010-08-02T14:51:33","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T21:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.net\/wordpress\/?p=407"},"modified":"2013-04-29T10:28:11","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T17:28:11","slug":"weed-out-your-friends-you-stool-pigeon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=407","title":{"rendered":"Weed out your friends you stool pigeon!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I find this an interesting concept on how local governments are starting to deal with deep budget cuts.\u00a0 I wonder what other services could become on-line like this &#8211; and the bigger question of what government services *should* be delivered like this.\u00a0 I found the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.civicapps.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">recent app contest <\/a>to be an interesting concept &#8211; and considered a few entry ideas myself.\u00a0 Right now, there is already an <a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/app\/city-portland-citizen-reports\/id351455616?mt=8\" target=\"_blank\">iPhone app that allows you to report problems <\/a>&#8211; but only for city-owned lands. However, it appears individual departments aren&#8217;t waiting for others to come up with ideas for them:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> Last week, the City of Portland launched a pilot program that  encourages neighbors to send in online complaints with photographs of  overgrown grass and weeds on other people\u2019s lawns.\u00a0 Offending property owners could face fines of $216 a month.\u00a0 The city requirement is that grass be less than 10 inches high.<\/p>\n<p>The Bureau of Development Services ran into deep  financial problems last year when building permits and fees dried up  because construction slowed amid the recession. The bureau responded to  the reduction by slashing jobs (they laid off 18 people of their 34 &#8211; over half the staff) . One of the  first casualties was the enforcement program for getting rid of  neighborhood eyesores and hazards like dry grass, which can cause fires.<\/p>\n<p>One consequence of complaining online is that the names of  people who inform on their neighbors will become a matter of public  record, so there\u2019s no hope of remaining anonymous. (BDS says it won\u2019t  volunteer the name of the complainant to the bad neighbor, however.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, if you wanna rat out your neighbors, go here:<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/portlandonline.com\/bds\/gwcomplaints\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/portlandonline.com\/bds\/gwcomplaints<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I find this an interesting concept on how local governments are starting to deal with deep budget cuts.\u00a0 I wonder what other services could become on-line like this &#8211; and the bigger question of what government services *should* be delivered like this.\u00a0 I found the recent app contest to be an interesting concept &#8211; and considered a few entry ideas myself.\u00a0 Right now, there is already an iPhone app that allows you to report problems &#8211; but only for city-owned&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=407\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool","category-local-interest"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-6z","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":899,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}