Case Study: City of Santa Cruz centralizes citizen service requests and boosts community engagement with Mendix

The City of Santa Cruz Centralizes Citizen Requests

The City of Santa Cruz, home to about 65,000 residents, needed a better way to connect the community with city services: a 20‑person IT department supporting 80+ applications faced 15 disparate request mechanisms (Adobe forms, CMS pages, phone lines), making service requests hard to find, costly to manage, and limiting community engagement. IT Director Laura Schmidt prioritized a single, flexible, cost‑sustainable platform with rapid time‑to‑value.

Using Mendix low‑code (with partner EPI‑USE), the team delivered a Community Request for Service Portal in three weeks — a web and mobile app that centralizes requests (bike hazards, graffiti, traffic), lets users add photos and geolocation, and streamlines workflows. The portal improved responsiveness, enabled data‑driven trend analysis, simplified integrations and future enhancements, and now serves as the foundation for ongoing digital initiatives to deepen community engagement.

City of Santa Cruz

Laura Schmidt

IT Director