High Five to @citybeautiful

Yesterday I went to dinner with my parents and two of our neighbors to Scruffy Murphy's in College Park.  I love that place...lots of great beers on tap, good food, decent prices.  I highly recommend the Shepherd's Pie.  Yum.

Very appropriate slogan!

...but I digress...anyway, Dad parked the truck and we walked down Edgewater Drive to Scruffy's and I noticed that one of the trees had been removed and there was a hole left in its place with some stakes. It wasn't very well marked and there was no barrier around the spot.  Maybe because I'm an attorney, or more likely because I can be a total klutz sometimes, I tend to notice things like this:

Yeah, I almost tripped over this.  Ack.

I posted the photo on twitter with a comment to @citybeautiful (the official City of Orlando twitter account) and @orlandosentinel that the photo was a removed tree on Edgewater and Winter Park Street and that it needed to be fixed.  I had just been talking with my parents about how Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker is active on twitter and very responsive to his citizens' requests, and thought it might be worth a try to see if anyone in Orlando was really monitoring these accounts.

Well, this morning, @citybeautiful sent me a reply:

@rumpfshaker @orlandosentinel Thanks! Have forwarded photo and address to appropriate dept.. Re:Removed tree on Edgewater/Winter Park.

Then, this afternoon I got an email from Michael McCarthy, who is the "Interactive Programs Supervisor" in the city's Office of Communications and Neighborhood Relations:

Dear Ms. Rumpf,

Good afternoon.  I need to ask a little more information than I can ask in 140 characters about the picture you posted on Twitter.   I am going to assume that you want a new tree to go in, but let me know for sure. The other alternative is covering and resurfacing the hole.  Our Parks section handles replanting trees, but Public Works handles the sidewalk repairs - so they asked me for a little more information so they could assign the task to the right crew.

Again, thanks for bringing this to our attention.  Have a great day.

Sincerely,

Michael

Wow.  What a great, quick response.  I sent a reply back that I was mainly concerned about someone tripping and falling on the hole, and I like the trees but if filling in the sidewalk is cheaper, let's do that.

Next time I'm in that area of College Park, I'll have to check and see what they did there.  Regardless, it's nice to know that someone's actually paying attention.

FYI, Orlando residents should check out this list of official City of Orlando social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, RSS Feeds, and a Flickr photo account:

City of Orlando Social Media Accounts

My hometown.  It really is beautiful here :)