How to report potholes, graffiti and other problems: City of Raleigh’s Ask Raleigh portal explained

Karen Ray, the City of Raleigh’s customer experience manager, said residents should use Ask Raleigh at ask.raleighnc.gov to report potholes, graffiti, damaged sidewalks and other nonemergency problems and to track the city’s response. “The best way to do that is to go to Ask Raleigh, which is on the city's website, and, submit a request through that,” she said.

The portal replaces the city’s prior use of SeeClickFix. Asked whether SeeClickFix is still in use, Ray said the city “doesn’t use that anymore,” and urged users to redirect to Ask Raleigh.

Residents can search for a category (for example, “park” or “greenway”), type an address or pin a location on the map, fill out the form fields the portal requests and submit. After submission the user receives a confirmation number and staff begin handling the request. Ray said some request types display an expected service level so users can anticipate how long a response should take.

There are two ways to follow a request: create an account to log in and track status and message staff, or file without an account and provide an email address so the city can send updates and a closure notification. Ray said closed requests include a period in which a user can dispute the closure; disputed cases are reviewed by the customer experience team. “Those come to me, and I take another look and say, yeah, staff, you need to go back out and do something, or I may help to educate you on why it was closed,” she said.

The portal also flags reports that are outside the city’s service area; Ray noted that state agencies, county departments, or utilities such as Duke Energy sometimes own or maintain streetlights and other infrastructure. When an item is out of the city’s jurisdiction, Ask Raleigh informs the filer who is likely responsible.

Ray described the internal workflow for handling submissions: departments can reassign tickets to the appropriate group, or return unclear items to the city’s core customer-experience team (Ray and one other staffer) for assessment and reassignment. She added that sometimes staff coordinate work outside the ticketing system but update the Ask Raleigh record so the requester sees the status.

To reduce unnecessary field responses, Ask Raleigh alerts a user if an issue has already been logged and offers to add them to a watch list; subscribed users receive a notification when the ticket is resolved. “If your neighbor already did it, you're gonna get a notice that says, this has already been logged. Would you like to be added to the watch list?” Ray said.

Ray listed the most common submissions she sees: street-sign problems (missing or fallen signs), traffic signals or lights that are out, sidewalks that are buckling or creating trip hazards, and public-nuisance complaints such as overgrown vacant lots or dumped trash. She clarified that routine neighborhood noise (for example, a child playing) is not treated as a public nuisance.

Ask Raleigh is part of a larger customer-experience strategy tied to the city’s planned move into a new city hall. Ray said when the city opens the new building in 2027, customer-facing services will be consolidated on the first floor so residents can be served in one location. “When we move into the new building, on the 1st Floor, we will be able to receive all of our customers who have a need,” she said.

Closing the episode, Ray encouraged residents to report problems and ask questions: “You're not a burden,” she said, adding that she or her coworker Jessica will respond when a request is routed to the customer-experience team. Host Katie Dombrowski invited listeners to submit questions through the city website and search for the podcast on raleighnc.gov.

The city did not announce formal changes to staffing levels or provide a timetable beyond the planned 2027 move; contact and jurisdictional guidance are available at ask.raleighnc.gov.