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Closed gas station turns into dumping ground, constituent frustrated over reporting procedure

7 months 2 weeks 3 days ago Wednesday, February 21 2024 Feb 21, 2024 February 21, 2024 4:39 PM February 21, 2024 in News
Source: WBRZ

BATON ROUGE - The city says it is discussing making an improvement to how it closes out constituent requests for service through its 311 reporting system.

As it goes now, work orders are submitted, then reviewed by the city. Once those work orders are reviewed, they are closed out without an explanation given to the person who submitted that request.

A 2 On Your Side story Wednesday got the conversation started with the city after a man said his three service requests were closed with no results.

Tim Edwards lives off of North Flannery Road in Baton Rouge. After a food mart and gas station closed near his home two months ago, trash has started piling up in the empty parking lot.

"Nobody would want their neighborhood to look like this," he said.

When the electricity was shut off to the property at Delores Drive, that’s when Edwards says the debris really started showing up. There are a couple dozen tires, a couch, bags of trash, clothing, even car parts amongst the debris.

Concerned about the safety and the eyesore in his neighborhood, Edwards submitted a service request through the RedStick311 app. Soon after, Edwards says the request was closed, so he submitted a new one. That one was closed, too.

His third request included photos and it was also closed. He contacted 2 On Your Side frustrated over the process because the trash was still there.

"Nothing was done," said Edwards.

Wednesday afternoon, the city told Brittany Weiss it has contacted the property owner and the property owner agreed to clean up the mess next week. It’s the information Edwards was looking for.

"If they would have called me, emailed me said, 'look, Mr. Edwards, we're aware of the problem and we're working on getting it fixed,' I would have never called you, Brittany, I really wouldn't have," said Edwards.

After 2 On Your Side inquired about Edward's concerns about his request closures, the city says it is discussing what needs to be done to change how it updates people who send in requests instead of simply closing them.

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