The City of Minden has released an app for Apple and Android devices that will allow users to access a variety of useful features right from their smartphone. Will Gerding, Minden’s Social Media Director, did note that they are constantly updating the app and that new features and changes will be coming in the future.
Gerding gave a presentation at the Greater Minden Chamber meeting on Wednesday in order to showcase some of the key features that the app will provide Minden citizens.
Some of these features include the ability for citizens to pay their utility bills from the app itself. Also, if citizens would like to report issues around town to the proper departments, there will be a feature in the app to do that as well. “If there is a pothole, people can take a picture of the pothole, it can geo-links where you took the picture, and then it gets brought to Public Works,” said Gerding.
One of the more interesting features is one that will allow users to browse all of the local deals for businesses around town. Users can then see all the deals in town by simply scrolling. “You click on local deals, and it will show all the deals that are going around town, for all businesses,” said Gerding.
They are even adding updates in the future that will allow for the option to receive push notifications whenever your phone senses that it’s close to a business with a deal going on. It does this by tracking the location of the phone, and if it goes into certain predetermined areas near the business, it will send the alert.
“We’re going to continuously add more businesses and make it as advertisable as possible,” said Gerding.
Of course, users will have the option to disable this feature if they so choose.
A City Calendar will also be a feature of the app, that will be updated with all of the local events going on in Minden.
“It will be constantly updated. We can actually use push notifications to tell people about City Events, like giving them a head’s up that Grilling On Main is happening in a week,” said Gerding.
From the calendar with the click of a button, events can be added to the user’s personal calendar on their phone.
This can also be used to alert citizens of City Council Meetings and Workshops, when live streams are happening, or let them look at past Council meeting. “You can look at all the city council meetings and all of the workshops right through the app. You don’t have to look at them online, they will all propagate to the app. We can push notification this as well,” said Gerding.
“I want to put Minden on the page as far as what people can get now. There is nobody else in this area that has got what we have as far as the app or things like that,” said Minden Mayor Terry Gardner.
“It’s going to be a really good tool. It’s going to be really good with economic development, and I think even people my age will like it once they get used to it.”
The app can be downloaded by searching “The City of Minden,” in the App Store or Google Play Store.