Public when it should be visible. Private when it should be protected.

Not every issue belongs on a public map. That single sentence is more or less the design principle behind SpotFix.

What's public

Anything in shared civic space:

• Potholes and damaged pavement
• Burnt-out streetlights
• Graffiti on public walls
• Illegal dumping in public areas
• Damaged sidewalks and curb ramps
• Broken street signs and crosswalk lights

These show up on the live map. Anyone can see what's been reported, what's being worked on, and what's been fixed. That visibility is the whole point — it's how trust gets built between residents and the people running the city.

What's private

Anything that lives behind a door, a fence, or an employment relationship:

• A leak inside a tenant's apartment
• A hazard on a mill floor
• A broken stair in a building stairwell
• An equipment fault on a construction site
• An internal facility issue at a warehouse

These never appear on the public map. They route directly to the property manager, the employer, the safety lead — whoever owns the fix. Other tenants and the general public don't see them. That isn't a setting buried in preferences. It's how the platform is built.

Why both have to coexist

A platform that only does public reports leaves landlords and employers without a useful tool. A platform that only does private reports leaves residents in the dark about their own city. SpotFix runs both, with a hard wall between them.

The same person can be a citizen reporting a pothole on their street in the morning and a tenant reporting a leak that afternoon. The first one shows up on the city map. The second one goes to their landlord and nobody else.

What this means in practice

Residents get transparency. Tenants and workers get confidentiality. Cities get a real intake system. Property managers and employers get a clean dashboard.

Public when it should be visible. Private when it should be protected. There's no middle setting on purpose.