IN WITH THE NEW: Find Aurora recreation activities at fingertips with app

YorkRegion.com
Dec. 26, 2014
Teresa Latchford

The Town of Aurora wants you to have its recreation information at your fingertips.

Launching in the New Year, the town will add a parks and recreation app to allow residents to access Aurora’s recreation guide, as well as swimming and skating times, using a simple app that can be downloaded to handheld devices free of charge.

“We want residents to have easy access to the information they most often check on our website,” Aurora corporate communications manager Mike Kemp said. “App development seems to be the way the industry is going.”

The app is being launched under the PingStreet umbrella, the town announced in late September. Three apps were originally launched including an elections app, which allowed residents to see who they were voting for, where they could vote, a countdown clock and advanced polling data. Currently, the app displays the official election results but will be transformed into a government app in January providing contact information for all of the elected officials, Kemp added.

Also launched in September was the waste management app allowing residents to access information about garbage and recycling pickup right on their phones or other mobile devices. It displays the information in a calendar format, including special pickup days, such as those for leaf and yard waste.

The news feed app, allowing residents to get the latest information about what the town is doing, was also part to the original package.

“The idea was for people who don’t follow Twitter and Facebook to have access to the latest news coming from the town,” Kemp added.

Residents are already responding to the report-a-problem app launched in December. It allows residents to take a photo of a pothole, broken sign or any other problem and send it directly to the town.

The app sends the photo and message directly to customer service, including GPS co-ordinates, who then flag it and forward the message to the appropriate department that will send someone out to fix it.

“It allows people who are out and about to report it immediately without having to remember where they were when they get home,” Kemp explained. “It’s more efficient on both sides.”

The entire initiative makes it easy for residents to access the information they most check on the town’s website.

The free download is as easy as visiting aurora.ca on a mobile device, selecting the e-services tab and clicking on the PingStreet tab, which will provide links to the full app.