The City of Milwaukee (when they get it right) snail mails residents within 250’ of an establishment seeking some type of new license, renewal, zoning change, etc. There is also a self-subscribe system for receiving notifications like this by email, based on a certain geographical radius you can select. It’s not a well-advertised system or easy to use, so I have always promoted it and redistributed the information on neighborhood websites, email groups, and more recently facebook and twitter where the notices can be more contextually meaningful to people.

SeeClickFix makes the process much easier, and much more prone to being an informal ad hoc group effort as people are moved to post their own issues or respond to the official municipal notices I post, which may also include significant crime and property nuisance issues from time to time.

While not widely used yet in Milwaukee, SCF has had the ability in some cases to attract some productive information sharing and discussion leading to a more cohesive and civically engaged community. I hope many little instances of this type of activity will occur in the future and empower citizens citywide.