9.e Discussion on City Communication policy
Staff Report
Date of Meeting: March 21, 2017
To: City Council
From: Neil Soltis, Administrator
Re: Communications guidelines / policy
Background: Traditionally City staff has been solely responsible for content creation for the City
newsletter, web site and Facebook page. Staff has prepared the newsletter for approval by the City
Council and the content for the website and Facebook page have been reviewed administratively.
In most instances the content provided has been the City’s official voice for general information
about the City, meetings and events, projects, ordinances, and reports.
With the spring newsletter articles have been submitted by Mayor Maefsky and Councilmember
Kronmiller with a follow-up content to be posted on the City website. While the creation of content
is helpful, it raises the issue of who can submit content for the City’s information tools and who
makes the decision as to the nature of the content and what is published. This is particularly true of
the newsletter where there are space limitations.
Issue:
Should the City’s communication policy be revised to address the creation, review, and
approval of content?
What are the roles of elected and appointed officials in the creation, review, and approval
of content?
Should the newsletter be modified or expanded to allow for additional content
Proposal Details:
The League’s information memo on Computer and Network Loss Control provides the following
guidance in this regard.
A city website is the official voice of the city and is recognized as such. Cities typically
assign website content development and posting duties to staff as part of their official job
duties. Sometimes those duties include a supervisor’s review of content before it is posted to
the website. Where content sign-off isn’t required, communications or other guidelines
usually direct staff in the city’s standards and expectations for acceptable and unacceptable
website communications.
Social media largely is perceived as a less formal method of communication than a website.
Cities that are using social media to communicate official city-sponsored messages should be
managing that official social media content in much the same way they manage the city
newsletter or website.
In seeking information about the practices in other Cities, the research attorney at the League
provided the following language from the City of Red Wing’s Communication Policy and Media
Guidelines.
Information provided to the media should reflect the consensus opinion of the Red Wing City
Council or the city administration’s interpretation of the City Council’s policy, and should
not reflect the personal views of a city employee.
Options:
1. Continue past practice of staff developing content
2. Modify the City Communication policy to address the creation, review, and approval of
content for release to the media and public based on the past practice
3. Modify the City Communication policy to address the creation, review, and approval of
content for release to the media and public with language similar to Red Wing that provides
for Council created content to be approved by Council consensus.
Recommendation: Option 3