Can the Town of Cobourg Communicate better?

Currently the Town communicates to citizens using the remaining newspaper, the Town website, social media (including You-Tube) and email – and communications manager Ashley Purdy wants to know how it can be done better.  A new survey with 10 questions is now available until Friday, March 29, 2019 (see link below).  Questions start by asking how you currently get news and go on to ask for suggestions on what can be done to do better.  The focus is on what the Town does: Planning, Town managed events and Venture 13 but there is no suggestion that the Town should provide information on what other organizations are doing even though the Town promotes Tourism and visitors are interested in events managed by anyone and everyone in the Town.

Ashley Purdy
Ashley Purdy

Questions asked:

  1. How do you stay informed about Town news and information?
  2. What type of news do you want to hear more of from the Town of Cobourg?  
  3. We are continually striving to provide an informative and functional website (www.cobourg.ca). Can you offer a suggestion on how to improve the site?
  4. Town of Cobourg Council Meetings are broadcast live to the public on our YouTube channel. Do you watch our meetings live and/or after they’ve aired?
  5. Have you missed news in the past from us? If so, what type of information have you missed?
  6. How do you find out about new development applications/proposals in the community?
  7. What kind of programs and services would you like to see offered at Venture13?
  8. How can we better communicate with you?

Here is your chance to comment on the job being done on the web site and whether Social media is working for you.

Links

Communications Survey

12 Comments
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Hillary
5 years ago

What is it about communications that gets some of you all excited.
How about this one?
“The Corporation of the Town of Cobourg has an opening for a permanent full time Public Works Inspector.”
No empire building here?
Just a job for regular guys.

5 years ago

This is probably none of my business since I live in Port Hope, however our communication problems in Port Hope are similar.
I read this blog faithfully because it is really good. It does all the right things and recognizes that the way to communicate in today’s world is to have an easy to read and navigate site and to have relevant content that is updated on a daily basis.
Surveys are really not required if the people involved just listened to the citizens and even better talked to them! The 2nd thing that the people in charge of communication should do is look at just why the Cobourg News Blog is so good and use it as a template for what they want to do. In fact, why not support this blog even more and work together to publish all the information that the good citizens of Coburg need and find useful.
Ken Morden

cornbread
5 years ago

Wow…now we will have 2 new people communicating in Cobourg…one in the Town Office and one in the Police Office. I wonder what the total salary plus benefits for these 2 positions will be and will it be worth it in the long run. Such a small town and such Empire Building. Seem the police service wants to call themselves a “Brand” as part of their new communications effort. Marketing at its best.

Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

Isn’t this what everybody wanted?
Openness, transparency, accountability and inclusiveness 24/7.
And now you are getting it.
Having surveys about holding surveys are next.
And a Deputy Mayor who wants to tick nobody off on her way to the top.
Some of us remember the real political leadership of Mayor Delanty who stuck it out with the “Frink” in spite of horrific abuse in the press and on this blog.

manfred s
Reply to  Walter L. Luedtke
5 years ago

oh Walter, Walter. While we might assume that “leadership” is always a strong, positive attribute, it is not necessarily a positive thing, nor a ‘do no harm’ thing. It is about convincing the followers to accept and support the views of the leader, whatever those views might be. There is a kind of comfort to be had by giving over one’s apprehensions and concerns to a leader whom we trust to deal with them to our satisfaction. Leaders of all stripes have come and gone over time immemorial. Their legacies range from superior to disastrous. Every leader leaves a mark, be it a great one or a bad one, but that mark does not necessarily define the leadership on the whole. Then again, fandom does not care for nor acknowledge the downsides of their idols, however minor or significant they are, may or might have been.

ben
5 years ago

As we know the budget for this department is increased because an assistant will be hired. Cart before the horse maybe. Are we searching for make-work projects for this new person. Meanwhile the communications person gets a raise because she will now supervise a person?

cornbread
Reply to  ben
5 years ago

Where is our new mayor of this topic? How about the “China” report and our new school. Is he hiding?

Pamela Jackson
5 years ago

Here we go again, another example of where the town hires first,
surveys next. I used to groan at the weight of all past surveys,
gathering dust in the basement of Victoria Hall, never to see the light of day once the exorbitant bills were paid. You hire the
communications person based on their vision of what the job entails, you don’t hire someone at face value and then ask the
clients, in this case the town and all the taxpayers, to lay out
the job description. Surely this person was hired with a very
aggressive idea of what the town needed? Obviously not.

My free advice, as a retired communications consultant and former
Cobourg councillor would be to put as much information on the
website as possible, make it inclusive of all residents, if a school
is putting on a play, tell the community, visitors may want to take
it in as well, every single item of interest to the community, every concert or event could be posted in a separate “compartment” on the website, a “What’s happening in Cobourg this week”. I trust
there is the “know-how” to do this.

Dubious
Reply to  Pamela Jackson
5 years ago

In addition to putting the information on the website it must be able to be found. The current search capability is atrocious!

Mrs. Anonymous
5 years ago

The Town is doing an excellent job of communicating.

No need to hire another communications person.

Jim Thomas
Reply to  Mrs. Anonymous
5 years ago

Apparently “need” was not part of the hiring decision.

cornbread
5 years ago

As town communications manager, she should have been hired on her actual knowledge of communications in a town our size…not now asking in a survey how to do it better from the general public who have little training in the skills of communication. The next thing we know there will be consultants from Toronto hired to do another survey.