NIPAWIN — A new strategy aims to improve communication between the town and its citizens. It requires that media requests are either answered by the mayor or town administrator, with other speakers requiring their authorization first.
Rennie Harper, Nipawin’s mayor, said that while the town has been working on the strategy for a while, the collision at the Armley corner highlights why it’s needed.
“In light of all of the things that have happened, it’s became really clear that people do need to know what they should do in the event that this happens or that happens,” she said, “and we’ve needed some clear guidelines.”
The strategy, passed at the April 23 council meeting, tasks the town with engaging its citizens, improving awareness of what the town does with public forums and ensuring front-line staff know about the issues the public is strongly interested in, improving internal communication, reviewing the town’s brand, and measuring so the town can determine how effective the plan is.
It also says the mayor and town administrator are the only ones authorized to speak to media, with councillors and staff requiring authorization from those two people before they can speak.
“It’s not meant to curtail anything,” Harper said.
“The intent there is just that there’s some formality to it, we’re kept in the loop,” said Barry Elliott, the town’s administrator. “Of course, we still want the media to have access to those professional resources for clarity.”
The idea, Harper said, is to clarify what a staff member should do while talking to media, to give an idea about all of the possible responses that they might not have thought about.
As for councillors, convention dictates the mayor is the spokesperson for council and that once a decision is made by council, the councillor publically supports it. Elliott said the new rules aren’t meant to supersede that or prevent media from talking to councillors.
The mayor said the strategy is still in a draft form and the town expects changes in the future.
“Now that we’re using a draft version, we’re going to give it a little bit of time to see how this works for us and whether there are truly any other changes required,” Elliott said. “I think the document, for the most part, is complete but council wanted to give it a trial run first.”
