Communication

The Town of Southern Pines should always strive to communicate more clearly and effectively with its residents. Most problems and questions people have with local government can be addressed with better communication. Below are a few ways I think the town government can better communicate with residents.

Website- The Town's website has come a very long way in the last year. Online minutes, schedules, agendas, draft ordinances, GIS and other features all contribute to the ease at which residents can get information. We still have a ways to go.

-Ultimately, we should have the requirement that all applications before the Town be submitted in digital form as well as on paper. Most documents, maps, plans, etc. the town receives from applicants are created digitally, so this should not be an undue burden. This will make it much easier to provide information to the public through the website. It would also drastically cut down on the expense of creating, distributing, and storing information within town government.

-We should continually strive to make the site more useful and interactive for our citizens. The site needs to make it easier to communicate with different departments and should ultimately allow citizens to do things like pay water bills online.

Offline- While the Internet can be a great tool, it is not the answer to everything.

-The Town should publish a "guide to Town services" and update it as needed. Many people do not know exactly what services the Town provides or how to utilize them. A guide reviewing Town services and addressing frequently asked questions will go a long way towards making the Town more customer friendly.

-A regular newsletter could also go a long way towards addressing issues and questions that come up periodically.

-Southern Pines 101- The Town already holds a popular and effective program in which interested residents can learn a whole lot about the Police Department. We need to have programming for other departments too. Especially with difficult subjects like planning and zoning, education before the fact will help citizens better understand the processes, strategies, and just what the heck is going on during public hearings.

Government Openness- I have not personally seen or heard of any intentional actions of the Town which have violated the laws concerning open meetings or public information. That said, we should not merely be satisfied with complying with the letter of the law. Many people have a fundamental mistrust of government. We need to make every effort to not even give the appearance of being anything other than completely open in how we conduct business.

-Notice of meetings should be released as early as possible and through as many channels as possible. There's certainly no excuse for ANY public meeting to not be posted immediately to the Town website.

-Educating the public on the processes, as I mentioned above should help people understand how the processes work and how things evolve. Once people understand the process, which is usually legally mandated, many suspicions or misunderstandings can be avoided.

-We should continually strive to make it easier and unintimidating for residents to provide feedback on anything related to Town business during meetings or at other times.

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