Need for Public Information Officer

Okay, so we lived through Fay without too much inconvenience. My house maintained power throughout the event. However, the need to get timely, accurate and complete information out to the public did not diminish due to the relatively minor nature of the storm. If anything, it could have served as a good "test run" to make sure everything is in place to get that information out to the public. This is especially important if we have a more severe storm event.

So how did the city do on this "test run?" Overall grade: D+ (the plus for identifying the need to communicate to the public; the "D" for doing it poorly)

The following was the first word that I received from the City regarding Fay's impact on city services. The e-mail - the one with actual words in the message - arrived at 5:15 p.m. yesterday. It appears below.

First of all there is no mention of the name "Tropical Storm Fay" in the message. The title of the e-mail is "Public Services Emergency Schedule". By reading the message, we find out that the beach and pool were closed "today". We also find out that the library closed at 5 p.m., reading the message sometime after it already closed. This sentence contains the first mention of "severe weather conditions." And we find out that public works is going about storm preparations - which they should be doing before the storm, one would assume. We also learn that emptied trash receptacles will be placed on "S/W." We are left to guess "S/W" means sidewalk? We are left with the following questions - what about garbage pick-up on Tuesday, will City Hall be open on Tuesday and will the City Commission meeting be canceled?

This next e-mail came from the city at 7:09 p.m. The title says "Tropical Storm Fay" - but contains no words in the text area of the message. Still no official word from the city other than an empty attempt to get some sort of message out to people who are on the Tropic-mail e-mail list.

Apparently, this was the intended content of the above e-mail transmission. This was part of a press release sent out to media outlets:


Here we (at least those fortunate enough to receive a full message) find out that the city will be closed on Tuesday and that the City Commission meeting is canceled. The way the message is worded makes it sound like the City Commission meeting (a "special meeting") is scheduled for Wednesday. We are left to guess whether or not that is the rescheduling of the regular Tuesday meeting that had been canceled or if it is another meeting. I have it on good authority that there is just a "special" City Commission meeting tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. to set the ballot and deal with other time sensitive issues. I am not aware of when the "make-up" meeting will take place. Oh, and if you go to the calendar on the City's website, we are told the meeting will take place at 12:30 a.m. - something that is not out of the realm of possibility? And we still don't know about garbage pick-up but I hope that most did not put out their trash cans given the high winds we experienced overnight.

By way of contrast, here is the simple and informational press release sent out by the City of Delray Beach:

Delray sends a minimum of a half dozen press releases each week on a variety of topics. I understand that they send theirs out in "HTML" - computer friendly text and in PDF documents - both. Lake Worth sends out only PDFs which require an Adobe reader and are a little more complicated for the unsophisticated computer user to access.

On Monday, I received the following "Summer 2008" - we are about 30 days away from Fall - City Times newsletter. This was one of the priorities discussed at the City Commission retreat in MARCH of this year - the need to get information out to the public. So, the City took almost six months to get out a newsletter on heavy, shiny stock and send it to all residents in the City. I am not sure of the total budget on this but for what was spent and what was delivered, I don't think we got our money's worth.
On the front page of the newsletter, we find out about the Grand Opening of the pool - that happened in May. Then we have a schedule of recreation program offerings. Very little information is offered - the most consistent message is "call for information". The entire document is also in Spanish - a good thing. But I notice the "Learn to Swim" class is translated "Aprenda a Nadir." "Nadar" is the verb for "to swim" in Spanish. "Nadir" means nothing in Spanish, but would translate from English as "mas bajo" - so maybe that means that one can learn to end up at the bottom of the pool? This error makes me think that there are other grammatical errors in the Spanish translation.

The interior facing page has the same background from the third page relating to hurricanes, but that page has no information that pertains to hurricanes. What the image of blowing palm trees does is create less contrast between the text and the background - making it harder to read - especially for elderly and people with eye conditions.

The rest is just sort of "blah". How many of these do you think will be kept and referred to over time?
Let's at least have some one - it could even be in a part time capacity - to act as the city's Public Information Officer. I would much rather have a continuous stream of simple, understandable and useful information that the dribbles that we now receive. I hope that you will bring this up to the Mayor and City Commissioners - this is something that must change.