By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com
MOUND CITY – At the Linn County Monday evening meeting on Sept. 30, Commissioner Jim Johnson questioned why the county needed to spend the money to advertise county voting notices and activities in the newspaper when they had a notification system.
Johnson expressed concern that the county had spent money on a notification system, $4,200 annually, and still was advertising in the newspapers.
The county is required by state statute to post some notices in the county’s official newspaper, the Linn County News. Cities and school boards are also required to post official notices such as budgets in a local news source like the News, however, they may invoke the home rule and post notices on websites like the Linn County Journal.
At Monday’s meeting County Clerk David Lamb pointed out that he specifically wanted to get voter registration and location notices out to the most people. In a phone interview with Lamb, he said that the attorney general’s office had asked that voter notification be placed in as many locations as possible including the county’s website.
In a phone conversation with Information Technology (IT) Director Chris Martin on Tuesday, he said that the CivicPlus notification system has had 32 people sign up for different varieties of notifications. Many of those people who have signed up are county employees who initiate the notifications. Others are signed up for closings and weather notifications.
The CivicPlus phone notification service is advertised at the very first of the county website notices. People can sign up for phone, text, email and more notifications regarding county events, general notifications, meeting notifications, public hearing for conditional use permits, road conditions/construction information, urgent notifications about things like flooding, fires, chemical spills, and train derailments.
For severe weather information, unexpected road closures, missing persons and evacuations of building or neighborhoods, Linn County has the Everbridge System, which is free to the county and subscribers receive alerts for severe weather conditions.
To sign up for Everbridge,/NE Kansas Alert and Notification System, go to the Citizens Assistance Programs under the Emergency Management Links on the county website.
At their meeting on Dec. 18, 2023, the Linn County Commissioners decided to purchase the CivicPlus Program after hearing from a group of citizens, mostly solar opponents, that they did not know when meetings were happening in Linn County even though they were posted in newspapers.
Commissioner Jason Hightower asked, “So the people are not using it?”
“So we need to figure a way to get it out there,” said Commission Chair Danny McCullough.
“Do we need to communicate better to people to get that out there or quit using it?” asked Johnson.
Johnson said that the county was spending quite a bit of money on the system for just a few people.
“We need to do one or the other if we are using this. We need to be paying for it. If not, we don’t need to be paying for that and then use the ads. I don’t see that we need to be using both I guess,” said Johnson.
McCullough asked that the CivicPlus system be advertised more to county residents by making sure it was on the county website and that all county departments have flyers to hand out about the CivicPlus system.
Johnson said that the county was spending money twice if they put ads in the paper and pay for this program.
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