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Don’t expect to see city of Smithville updates on Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter any time soon.

City staff recommended that the city join a growing trend among municipalities and start communicating with residents through social media sites.

But the Board of Aldermen members unanimously shot down the idea by rejecting a proposal to adopt a social media policy.

Board members worried updating the sites would put more work on an already stressed staff. And they expressed concerns about oversight of what staff members would post as well as the lack of control over what the public could post in response to city comments.

“I’m not sensing a real need for this,” board member Brian Fullmer said.

Board member Mark Krokstrom said he was leery about what staff members might post.

“We’ve had a history of vindictiveness with people on the way out the door,” he said. “I think we should hold off.”

Board members said that if staff did post on the sites, they would prefer to limit those who post on behalf of the city to just one staff member instead of City Administrator Gerry Vernon’s suggestion to allow a few staffers to post.

“We need to step back and make sure we’re not getting ourselves into unintended consequences,” board member Adam Naber said.

Vernon said the city could use the sites to communicate timely information, such as road closures, water outages and reminders about public meetings.

If, for example, staff wrote a sentence or two about a road closure on Facebook and Twitter, then individuals signed up to receive the city’s posts would see the news the next time they checked the sites.

Vernon pointed out that using the sites, which are free to use, would not be time consuming considering the limit for each post is about a couple of sentences.

According to a statistic Vernon read, about 75 percent of Internet users use one of the social media sites.

“This would be taking the next step in getting more content to the community. It would be a faster, better and easier way to communicate at times,” Vernon said. “It would be another avenue to let people know what’s going on in the city of Smithville.”

Also during the meeting, the board gave preliminary approval to a proposal to improve the city’s Web site. The proposed agreement with Tower Innovations would increase the district’s costs for the site from $180 a year plus $70 an hour for technical support to $2,400 a year. Improvements would include more storage space for documents such as aldermen meeting minutes and the ability to update the site more often.

The board voted 5-1 on the proposal. Krokstrom voted against the proposal, saying he didn’t think the upgrades justified the cost increase.

Smithville Editor Nancy Hull Rigdon can be reached at 532-4444 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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