South Pasadena, CA, a picturesque and historic community nestled just minutes from downtown Los Angeles, prides itself on its vibrant local businesses and engaged residents. With a population of about 25,000 across a compact 3.5 miles, the city has long fostered a strong sense of community and active participation among its citizens. However, the city faced challenges in centralizing service requests and streamlining communication with its residents. Recognizing the need for a unified platform, South Pasadena turned to GOGov for an innovative solution. Through GOGov’s Citizen Requests/311 and Citizen Notifications modules, the city launched the "SouthPas Mobile" app, revolutionizing how it interacts with and serves its community.

About South Pasadena, CA

The City of South Pasadena is a small but mighty community located in Southern California, about seven minutes away from downtown Los Angeles. It’s a beautiful, historic community, with a population of about 25,000 in a range of 3 ½ miles. In South Pasadena, there are many unique small businesses that thrive alongside highly involved residents. The city takes pride in fostering community engagement and strong connections among its residents.

What was the challenge that led South Pasadena to GOGov?

In the past couple of years, South Pasadena had several ways for citizens to put in service requests and any requests in general. The reason for implementing GOGov’s Citizen Requests/311 module was that the City Council saw the need to centralize South Pasadena’s service requests and the services they were providing as a smaller city with a full-service government. South Pasadena has its own public safety, public works, and community development departments. With the support of SP’s Council, the city started looking into mobile app options since they noticed surrounding cities developing mobile apps. After speaking with some surrounding cities and recognizing the benefits of using a city-branded mobile app, South Pasadena reached out to GOGov!

With neighboring cities using GOGov and their positive experiences with customer service and different products, GOGov became the right fit for South Pasadena for adopting Citizen Notifications and Citizen Requests/311, with a city-branded mobile app “SouthPas Mobile”. With Citizen Notifications South Pasadena could enhance communication to the community, and with Citizen Requests/311, they were now able to centralize requests from citizens to the city.

How is South Pasadena using GOGov today?

South Pasadena has been very active with using both Citizen Notifications and Citizen Requests/311 products, as well as using the app as a source of information. The city has been using the applets on the homepage to plug in important information links, such as strategic plans or budget surveys, topics that the city wants people to see when they open the app right away. With the CRM side of Citizen Requests/311, they have used FAQ’s for commonly requested information within the app, as well as the service request platform where citizens are able to log into their account and submit requests for multiple different topics such as potholes, trees, street issues, and more. The public works and community development departments really enjoy the system and think it’s easy to use.

For the Citizen Notifications module, the city uses it to get information out to the community, such as traffic, closures, and any updates or opportunities for people to get involved with the community.

“We've gotten great feedback on the notifications, people really like receiving notifications right at the home screen of their phone instead of having to dig through our website or social media. So that's been a great feature for us too.” Mary Haddad, Management Analyst – City Manager's Office City of South Pasadena

A recent example of how GOGov has made a difference in South Pasadena’s community is the focus on the ban gas-powered leaf blowers. The city is known for its sustainability efforts and launched an ordinance a few years ago on the ban of gas-powered leaf blowers. To do outreach on that ban, the city used their mobile app “South Pas Mobile”.

“We’ve had different events promoting the use of electric leaf blowers and we've actually sent out notifications saying ‘meet us here at this time, at this park to learn about this topic’ and people have showed up in real time to learn more about those electric leaf blowers." – Mary Haddad, Management Analyst – City Manager's Office City of South Pasadena

The Citizen Requests/311 side of the app has been helpful for citizens to report people in the community who are still using gas-powered leaf blowers. The location feature while submitting a request has been extremely helpful for the code enforcement department to report to those who are in violation of that ordinance.

Future Plans for South Pasadena, CA

South Pasadena plans to continue utilizing the Citizen Notifications platform for their continued outreach efforts. They would like to use the app for creative approaches for service requests and continue marketing the app to the community. The city has prioritized getting up to date on technology and plans to continue using the platforms to unite the community. When asked for advice for another small city considering GOGov’s solutions:

“I would tell municipalities to really look at what their workflows and what their customer service looks like now. If they can look at that and say our customer service is centralized, it's wonderful, then maybe they're in a good spot. But if they see some gaps in how service is being provided, to really consider how technology can fill in some of those gaps, especially for some of the smaller municipalities similar to South Pasadena, technology plays a big role, so I would advise them to take a look at or speak to some other city, see how it's benefited them.” – Mary Haddad, Management Analyst – City Manager's Office City of South Pasadena

Your Municipality Powered by GOGov

GOGov is committed to helping municipalities and local governments enhance community engagement, streamline operations, and foster transparent communication. Our partnership with South Pasadena demonstrates the potential of our solutions to make a meaningful impact on cities of all sizes, and our continued efforts to improve and innovate further.  

GOGov specializes in providing CRM, Code Enforcement, Citizen Notifications, Online Permitting and mobile software to local governments of all sizes. We built our software from the ground up working with the departments and staff that now use our products every single day.

Interested in learning more? Sign up for a demo with the GOGov team today.

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