What this helps you do
Your municipality publishes notices because it is required to, in the places the law names: the newspaper of record, the posted board, the website, the agenda packet, the official emergency notification path. This Hub is none of those. It is one additional voluntary channel to the residents who chose to connect, and it changes nothing about what you are obliged to publish or where.
When to use it
Read this before the first send, and again before anyone proposes using this channel for a legal notice, a hearing notice, an emergency warning or a record that has to be kept.
How to do it
- Keep every required notice exactly where it goes now. Nothing here replaces any of it.
- In a message that mirrors a required notice, say where the official version is and link it, so a resident who reads only this one still knows where to look.
- In an emergency-adjacent message, say which source carries the official instructions. Residents should never treat silence here as an all-clear.
- Assume partial reach. The connected audience is self-selected, always a share of the town, and it changes daily.
- If a message has to be retained, keep the copy in your records system. Messages here auto-delete after 30 days.
- Check accessibility and public-records practice with your own counsel. Nothing in this product asserts conformance with any standard or statute.
Example
A water advisory is issued. The official notification goes out on the path the procedure names, the notice is posted where it is required, and the local radio station is called. Then the Hub carries a plain-language courtesy version to the residents who connected, saying what to do, where the official notice is, and when the next update comes. Later, the town reports that the advisory was published as required and that a courtesy message reached the residents connected to the town's voluntary channel. Both statements are true, and neither one stands in for the other.
Good to know
- This is not an emergency alert system, a mass-notification or reverse-911 platform, a CAD, 311 or utility-billing integration, or an IPAWS or WEA path.
- It satisfies no statutory public-notice, open-meetings, accessibility or records-retention obligation, and makes no conformance claim of any kind.
- Residents are never enrolled by the municipality. They ask, you approve, and they can leave silently at any moment.
- A read count is not proof that a resident was notified, and it is not an acknowledgement. Only a YES / NO reply is a resident's own answer, and only from the residents who sent one.