City Staff to seek approval of new communication policy at Monday Council session

How the City communicates with
its residents and the media will
be a topic at tonight's Council session

Prince Rupert Council members will be reviewing how the city communicates with its residents tonight, as Veronika Stewart, the City's Communication Manager delivers a report that will be seeking the repeal of the previous policy, in effect since 2003 and approval of  a new updated policy.

The need for a new approach seems to be related to recent discussions by Council as to how they should approach their response to camera meetings and the flow of information that should come from those closed sessions of Council.

In her report Ms. Stewart notes the main goal of the new policy initiative.

"The previous Communications policy, enacted in 2003 is outmoded and outdated. Given that the City has greater communications capacity than ever before, it is now prudent to implement a new policy that better reflects current communications capabilities and technologies at the City. The new policy addresses not only in-camera information, but also general principles for City Staff when it comes to the sharing of information. This is to ensure that all information provided by the City to local media is timely, accurate and reflects the goals of City Council and Administration."

From that, the Communication Manager has expanded on the approach of how the City will share its information moving forward. The nine page report for Council will outline the goals of the new policy and how it will be applied should it be adopted.

As well,  among some of the themes that Ms. Stewart will explore, will be a number of elements related to community updates, media relations between the city and the media, the city's social media policy and how the City will handle crisis and emergency communications.

A thumbnail guide to some of the goals of the policy under review tonight can be found below:

Some of the initiatives that may come from the revised policy include: 

The prospect of the city setting up an email notification system for residents to receive updates on disruptions of service, event announcements, notice of paving and other items of note.

A revision of the media relations process for City staff, including which members of staff will speak to the media, as well as a definition as to which media options the city will respond to when inquiries are made.

Veronika Stewart The City of
Prince Rupert's  Communication Manager
will  outline the themes of the city's new
communication policies tonight
(photo from City of PR website)

With Social Media becoming a larger part of the city's information delivery process, the new policy will also outline the guidelines that the city will use when sharing any civic information through the range of social media options that are available

You can review the full report from the City's Regular Council Meeting Agenda package for this evening starting at page 54.

For more notes related to this evenings City Council session see our Council Preview here.

A wider overview of past discussion topics can be found on our Council Archive page.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review