Dear Residents of SYSRC:
Communicating effectively with the SYSRC residents is complicated because of the poor internet coverage in the community. As well, many residents with internet do not have a Facebook account. This means that simply communicating through the municipal social media is not good enough as only a portion of the population is reached on a regular basis.
The final report to council will contain recommendations and options on how to provide better transparency and communication to the residents. The section is not written yet but some of the options could be:
- Holding regular town hall meetings
- Having a municipal presence such as a booth with material to distribute at community events, e.g. the Poker Run, Rusagonis Recreation Center Events, Community organizations and church events/community picnics, etc.
- Mail outs on a quarterly or semi annual basis
Communicating to residents and being transparent cost money (hall rentals, information material, internet charges) but not communicating or not being transparent can cost even more.
I wanted to communicate the importance of election engagement and voting through the posting of my seven statements series in February but that unfortunately did not reach a lot of people.
I decided to have a pamphlet designed, drafted, printed and mailed out to the totality of the community. It summarizes the statements on governance and leadership. It also provides information on voting and on other community events. It is in the mail now and the electronic version can be seen by pressing the link below.
It was important for me to reach out to as many people as possible and to have this as a test run for a future council. But, I did not want the cost of it to cloud the issue, so the work was done on my own time and paid for out of my pocket and therefore none of the costs associated with the pamphlet have been passed on to you.
Furthermore, an editable version of the pamphlet will be left with the municipality in case the new council wants to use the template going forward. This will minimize the cost to you, the taxpayers.
This was a learning experience for me and the future council. I am hoping that everyone in the community receives the pamphlet however, mailing to everyone in the community it is not an exact science.
The version of the pamphlet being mailed is in black and white and the link to the coloured version is here:
Don Ferguson\
Supervisor SYSRC