Columbus approves crime-alert app
Columbus COLUMBUS — police soon will send crime and traffic alerts straight to your smartphone.
The Columbus City Council approved a $72,000 contract on Monday with MobilePD to create a smartphone app that will send push notifications, allow users to submit crime tips and directly communicate with police officers.
The council, at its Monday meeting, also approved changes to how Columbus awards incentives for residential developments and new regulations for shortterm rentals such as Airbnb.
Police now use social media to send information to the public, but Columbus Deputy Chief Thomas Quinlan said that is limited by whether someone is using the social media platform when the information goes out. The MobilePD app will allow the department to send push notifications directly to cellphones.
The version of the app in Austin, Texas, allows users to submit crime tips, either anonymously or with a name attached. Quinlan said that could be useful if a tipster doesn’t want to call attention to themselves when submitting information.
Police also will be able to send information back to people. Crime maps and other resources also will be available in the app.
The contract with MobilePD is for three years and includes training, he said. It will take about three months of development before the app is launched in the fall.
Under the incentives changes approved by the council, developers who receive the most-lucrative property-tax abatements for residential developments in the city’s most-prosperous areas will be required to either set aside a portion of their units as affordable housing or pay penalties into a fund that would be used to build those units.
“We know this isn’t on its own a silver bullet” to solve the city’s dearth of affordable housing, Councilwoman Elizabeth Brown said.
Columbus neighborhoods would be divided into three categories based on several factors, including population changes and economic indicators, to determine which incentives a developer could receive.
Developers would be required to set aside a portion of residential projects for affordable housing when they seek the city’s most-lucrative incentives — a 15-year, 100 percent property-tax abatement — in areas that are in the two categories that classify them as thriving. If they do not, they would pay penalties, with the proceeds used to build affordable units.
Projects in the third category would not be required to have affordable units. Critics of the changes have said the city’s use of area median income, which considers the entire metropolitan statistical area, to determine affordability still will price out residents in the lowest-income neighborhoods.
The newly approved rules for short-term rentals — such as through Airbnb — also would support affordable housing using a portion of the registration fee that “hosts” would pay the city starting Jan. 1.