Shawano County supervisors listened to residents last month when they voiced opposition to a proposed wheel tax, voting unanimously not to adopt the measure.
At that informational meeting many also questioned what they described as a lack of communication from the county with other municipalities.
Now, supervisors are working to improve those communications.
A consensus at the March 19 executive committee meeting will have Jim Davel, administrative coordinator, create a monthly newsletter that will be shared with city, town and village clerks in the county. It will then be the responsibility of those clerks to share that information with other local officials and their residents.
Davel already creates a similar, but confidential newsletter, for county board members prior to board meetings. That will continue.
Committee members said no to a county Facebook page. Several departments, such as the library, parks, human resources, sheriff, land conservation, 4-H, and health, have their own Facebook pages.
“It causes, sometimes, too many negative comments,” said Matt Hietpas, technology services director, of the Facebook pages. “And then, who do you want managing that?”
Hietpas said it could be time consuming to manage the page and the comments.
Some supervisors suggested either not responding to comments or shutting off the comments feature on each post.
County Board Chairman Tom Kautza said some posts tend to attract a lot of nonsensical comments, often not even related to the topic of the post.
Davel reminded supervisors that there were some issues, including threats, with the health department Facebook posts during COVID-19.
Hietpas said the county now tries to make its website a one-stop shop for everything. The information is there; it’s up to individuals to find it and read it. All meeting minutes are posted, resolutions are uploaded, press releases and voting information are announced.
“We have a website that we try to put everything on,” he said. “How many spots do you want to manage?”
Supervisor Randy Young said if the information is available, the county should not have to spoon-feed it to local municipalities.
The monthly newsletter will be the first step, with other measures possible in the future.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
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