By Gregory Korte
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A $40,000 effort to use the Internet as a way to gather more feedback about city of Cincinnati services has died for lack of feedback.
Cincinnati City Council signed a deal in February 2001 with Planet Feedback, an Over-the-Rhine-based Web technology firm, to track citizen complaints, compliments and suggestions.
Two years later, the city had gotten just 90 on-line responses. At that rate, each response cost the city $444.
City Manager Valerie Lemmie decided last week not to renew the contract for another year, saying, "The limited use of this co-branded site did not justify further expenditures."
The comments and questions submitted on the site to the city and provided to The Cincinnati Enquirer under the public records law included:
A North Carolina resident asking when Riverfront Stadium would be torn down.
A city employee looking for tuition reimbursement forms.
A junk e-mail from a locksmith company.
Four council members pushed for the Planet Feedback contract in 2001. Then-Councilman Phil Heimlich said it was a good use of taxpayer money, making government more efficient and responsive.
"If you need a pothole filled, trash picked up or your snow plowed off your street, just click, write and send," he proclaimed.
Council members John Cranley, Pat DeWine and Alicia Reece co-sponsored the initiative.
DeWine said he still believes in the value of the feedback program.
"My concern throughout the Planet Feedback thing is, I don't think the city administrators were committed to this kind of mechanism. I don't think it was effectively marketed," he said. "If you don't tell people about it, they can't use it."
The city posted a small link to the Planet Feedback site at the bottom of its Web page. In a report to City Council last week, Regional Computer Center Director Ralph Renneker said the Planet Feedback site duplicated an on-line request form from the Department of Public Services. (http://www.rcc.org/ps/request.html)
Pete Blackshaw, the founder and chief marketing officer of Planet Feedback, said he was "deeply disappointed" that the Cincinnati experiment didn't work. The $40,000 contract - a discount on the firm's usual fee - was intended as a pilot project that could be duplicated in other cities.
The company also has private clients.
E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com
