MyGrapevine app offers residents info, services

Grapevine is reminding residents that a city smartphone application is available for reporting problems and tracking city waste services.

The free MyGrapevine app offers information on recycling procedures and schedules, trash collection, bulk and brush collection, yard waste, household hazardous waste, electronics recycling and other environmental topics. It also provides contact information for various city departments, and its "Report a Problem" feature allows users to attach photos to alert city officials of a range of issues.

Grapevine Parks Manager Tony Steele has overseen implementation of the app and said the development of the smartphone resource has been an ongoing project over the past year or so.

"It started out as an app called MyWaste that was provided by Republic Services per their contract with us," Steele said.

Steele said it developed into the MyGrapevine app through the efforts of a class in the Grapevine Chamber of Commerce's annual Leadership Grapevine program.

"Our project was to come up with a way to report problems within the city itself, from department to department," Steele said. "We decided the easy way to do that would be with a smartphone app. As we started doing the research, we discovered [the MyWaste app] did 80 percent of what we wanted anyway, so we started working with that company, tweaking and adding details we needed to see on the maintenance side."

Select functions of the app, such as a news feed and specific information windows for residents and businesses, are still under development, Steele said.

The application is available on the city's website at www.ci.grapevine.tx.us/index.aspx?NID=80.