Tag, Tweet, Comment or Post: City Seeks to Engage Residents Through Social Media

In an effort to engage residents and be more open and transparent, the city of Rohnert Park is preparing to launch a city Facebook page by June 1. But, because of freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment and public records laws, the city can’t regulate every comment readers post, even if they don’t like it. 

The City Council said they were concerned with the public posing comments, articles, links or photos that are either inaccurate, hurtful or that don't reflect the city's ideology.

"Our ability to regulate content is going to be somewhat curtailed," said City Attorney Michelle Kenyon. "That is what happens when the city chooses to open a limited public forum — it chooses to allow content that may not represent the views of the community or the city. We may be obligated to keep that content on Facebook."

The city may only be able to correct comments by posting a counter argument. 

"The only people that can regulate the content or remove content that is inappropriate would be the city manager with consultation of the city attorney," Kenyon said.

"Social media use by government agencies does present some challenges, both in terms of policy and legally," said Terri Griffin, the deputy city clerk who drafted the city's Facebook policy with David Rowley, the city's information technology manager.

But Rowley and City Manager Gabe Gonzalez said the benefits vastly outweigh the costs or problems that might come with using Facebook.

"We can really use this social media to effectively reach citizens," Rowley said. "That’s our goal — to reach out to them. They can leave comments and we can engage them and respond to them in an effective manner. But to do that … we all need to be on the same page, and thus comes our social media policy."

Facebook has the ability to provide a great benefit to the community, Gonzalez said. Residents can go on the page, for example, and post a comment — it's a way to turn the wheels of government a little bit faster. 

Griffin said, for example, that if a tree is blocking a road after a storm, or there's flooding, a citizen can post a comment and it could get responded to quicker than making a call. Also, the site could be used for public safety issues or to post emergency responses.

The city already has Facebook pages for Tasty Tuesdays, the city's 50th anniversary celebration the city's parks, community and recreation services and the Rohenrt Park Animal Shelter. 

Griffin said the way Mickey Zeldes, the animal shelter supervisor, uses Facebook is a great example of the right way to use the social media powerhouse. Zeldes uses the photos tool to show off animals who are available for adoption.

Facebook can provide a great benefit to the community, Gonzalez said.

"It gives us a lot of opportunity to increase the transparency of local government and improve the communication to the community," he said.

Councilmember Joe Callinan raised questions about the amount of staff time spent moderating the site. He said we should look at the cost to the city, and reevaluate it's effectiveness in a month or two. In a time of severe budget problems, should the city be spending money on tweeting and commenting on Facebook? he asked.

"I think this is a matter that we have to look at in terms of staff time," Gonzalez said. "But more importantly, what we're trying to achieve here is the communication factor with the residents. Any media we use to communicate, whether it's a biweekly newsletter, or it's an ad in the newspaper or fliers, there's a cost associated with it."

"This we found to be the least costly," he added. "And the benefit greatly outweighs the cost."

Kenyon said Vice Mayor Jake Mackenzie, who uses Facebook on a regular basis to communicate, may have to more closely monitor the kinds of things he posts. 

"Should you ever friend your fellow councilmembers, even though it’s a personal use of your facebook page, you could run the risk of violating the Brown Act," Kenyon said. "I don’t want to give the impression to the council that you can never post items on Facebook or be on Facebook for your own personal use. Even under the Brown Act, if you are not discussion anything within jurisdiction of the city, you can communicate all you want."

But problems could arise in day to day online communication, she said.

"It’s only when you are discussing item that is either before the council or is likely to come before the council when I would ask that you pause, and think about what it is that you are posting and where you are posting it. And who may have access to that post," Kenyon said.

"This is a problem for me, because I’m active," said Mackenzie, who added that Facebook is how he found out about the recent deaths of Marin Supervisor Charles McGlashan and Sonoma State University English professor Robert Coleman-Senghor, who also served on the Cotati City Council.

"This is a very serious matter … we absolutely need to have these policies," Mackenzie said. "A lot of people are getting their information this way now if they are of a certain age. They’re texing and they’re facebooking and they’re tweeting — there’s a different world coming folks, and it’s terrific our departments are communicating this way."

Editor's note: Rohnert Park Patch reported on the city's use of facebook months ago. Check out that story here. According to Facebook, the media site has more than 500 million active users in the world, 50 percent of those users log on every day and the average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events virtually.