Officials say new policies will allow residents to access town information more readily.

CAPE ELIZABETH–The Cape Elizabeth Town Council on July 12 adopted a new communications strategy aimed at allowing residents to more easily access information and participate in town government.

Cape Town Manager Michael McGovern said improving communication with the public was one of the goals set forth this year by the council.

“It came out of the annual goal setting process,” he said last week in an interview in advance of the meeting. “The first goal was to have citizens more effectively participate at meetings and the second was to develop a communication strategy on ways to communicate best with the citizens.”

The strategy, which was unanimously approved at the meeting, has five desired outcomes: citizens will know where to find information on local government and will be able to complete routine transactions with government at all hours; meeting room and meeting procedures will enhance public engagement; citizens will have opportunities to impact local decision making; municipal information, both online and in print, will have a clearly recognized identity; and, officials and staff will understand opportunities to disseminate information of interest to citizens and other parties.

“The whole point of this strategy is that it will provide many more opportunities for citizens to participate in meetings,” McGovern said. “This will permit public comment at all meetings of boards and commissions, including workshops, where the public was welcomed, but could only sit and listen.”

Through the strategy, meeting rooms and their efficiency will be examined.

“Our meeting rooms are often overcrowded and acoustics are poor. When people go to a meeting they should be comfortable, they should be able to hear and they should be able to have a place to sit and they should be comfortable,” McGovern said.

The strategy also includes the expansion of materials relating to agenda items available online and an update of its town logo for use for municipal vehicles, letterheads and municipal documents, agendas and letterheads. According to the strategy, the website will remain the primary source of official municipal information, but will not “serve as a vehicle for commenting on municipal issues.”

It will, however, include RSS feeds, web updates, and videos of matters of importance for residents.

While the town will continue offering the option of e-mailing boards and commissions directly through the website, sharing the e-mails, considered public record, will not happen.

That practice was eliminated from the website in February because of the time it took town staff to go through the e-mails and post them, as well as the fact that many did not portray the town in an accurate light, McGovern said.

“I know of no other organization or business that prints on its website every e-mail they receive,” McGovern said.

He said residents are still encouraged to send the town e-mail or maintain blogs or personal websites to convey their opinions on town business. Having such information of personal opinion is not the proper venue for the town’s website, he said.

“People look to the town’s website when they are looking to buy property in town,” McGovern said. “Do we really need comments that have no validity or truth to them that people may assume are correct?”

The e-mails that were once posted on the site are available, but no new e-mails have been posted. The town keeps all e-mails sent to and from town officials and makes them available to the public, McGovern said.

In fact, McGovern said, he has 20,000 e-mail messages he has either sent or received relating to town politics and practices.

CETV, the town’s public access television channel, has agreed to repeat airings of municipal meetings more often for the convenience of its viewers and broadcast small segments on items of interest.

Councilor James Walsh, who along with fellow councilors worked to develop the strategy, said at the meeting that Cape Elizabeth’s approach to communication has already caught the attention of other towns and cities that want to follow Cape Elizabeth’s example.

“Other communities around the area have requested copies of it because they have seen what we have done,” he said, adding he hopes his constituents embrace the strategy and “ feel more connected to their government because this is what it is all about.”