(Spencer)– City officials in Spencer say they are now able to relay messages, including those for emergencies, through a texting service called “Text My Gov”. City Manager Kevin Robinson says until now, people could sign up for the service but the city couldn’t send messages yet…
“We received some feedback from people who had opted in for Text My Gov and didn’t receive a message in the last event. We now have authority from Text My Gov to go ahead and send messages out. Our initial agreement was we would spend 30 days marketing and then would be able to send messages out, which would have been September 1st. Obviously the derecho didn’t wait until September 1st and so we contacted Text My Gov and we see the value in being able to use it now. There were 650 or so opt ins when we first sent out the marketing response, so another 2,500 to 3,000 on a list that Text My Gov has, so we currently have just around 4,000 people in the data base so we’ll be able to send messages out now from the Text My Gov app.”
Residents can sign up by texting spenceralerts, all one word, to 91896.
Robinson also gave an update at Monday’s City Council meeting regarding a new app that will allow the city to relay additional emergency information, such as river levels. He says they’ve ran into delays in getting the app out to the app stores…
“What we’re learning is for a government entity itself to be approved, Apple and Google have a lot more scrutiny than if just a private company or a developer did an app. There’s another layer of verification that you really are a government, you really do exist. And so we’re in the final phases of getting that done. I would anticipate that app will be live the middle of the month.”
The new app will also be integrated into the city’s website and will even include a tool for modeling level units based on rainfall amounts.
