Westlock County council and staff will strive to employ better communication practices with residents acting on recommendations from a recent public survey.
Council had an opportunity to hear from Jackie Sargent, a strategic communication management professional with Jackie Sargent Communications, at its Oct. 8 meeting. Sargent was hired earlier this year to provide some insight into how the municipality can better serve residents and improve its communications practices.
A survey was mailed to each household in the county this summer, at a cost of roughly $5,000, while the contract with Sargent came out to $5,250.
Sargent said she conducted two sessions with staff and held three open house focus groups with residents throughout the county earlier this year as part of her communications audit, before creating the survey questions that were then approved by council and sent to residents.
She then compiled the results into a report for council and will further work with administration on completing a communications policy and will provide some social media training to staff in the near future.
While compiling the report, however, the results and subsequent comments were unintentionally left online after the date to complete the document had passed and were viewed by numerous residents for nearly a month until the county was made aware. One of those residents also passed that information along with a link to the Westlock News, which was then reported on in the Oct. 1 edition.
“The results, unfortunately, were made public, and that was due to me not understanding when you put something in the trash in Google, it does not delete,” Sargent told council. “This is a lesson learned for me, a very difficult lesson and one I’m very embarrassed about and one that I take responsibility for, and I extend my most sincere apologies to this council.”
At the meeting, she presented her recommendations to council in an 18-page report.
Sargent noted 351 county residents participated in the survey, while five others were removed as they did not identify as residents. With 7,220 county residents, the survey is considered statistically valid with 95 per cent accuracy. There is a five per cent margin of error.
She also told council, the results were consistent with what she heard from residents during the focus groups, mainly that most felt they did not have a clear understanding of the county’s strategic vision and direction or how their tax dollars were being spent.
“There’s going to be some concerted efforts needed to start moving people into that positive response rate, further down the road should you do another survey again, which I do recommend, by the way.
“People are really frustrated. I know that administration is sincere in wanting to communicate, I heard that from everybody.”
Sargent went on to share comments about councillors not being visible and not returning phone calls. There also seems to be a lack of clarity in council’s role in operational matters, she said. Gone are the days of elected officials being out on the back roads telling grader operators how to do their jobs.
She also shared that residents were overwhelmingly in favour of receiving a monthly county newsletter and many were also very positive about a Westlock County Facebook page.
While many of the results were critical of the county for prior communications practices, she did also point out a few positive signs.
First, she commended CAO Leo Ludwig for his internal communications practice of sitting down with staff after meetings and getting them up-to-speed on council’s decisions and how those decisions affect their jobs.
“That’s a fantastic practice and not a lot of communities do that, so I applaud Leo. That’s a great way to engage staff,” said Sargent.
County administration is also transitioning to providing a run-down of council meetings soon after they occur on the website. Sargent said one of the frustrations she heard from residents was that they didn’t know what happened in council until the minutes had been approved two weeks later, which is common practice. She also added that the minutes that are provided are far more detailed than many municipalities she has worked with.
A part-time communications person has also been hired to focus on that aspect of the county’s operations.
“That was very informative for us,” said reeve Lou Hall after the presentation. “Certainly there is a lot of things in there that are not new to us, so this just kind of formalizes it and gives it some direction.”
Coun. Dennis Primeau stressed his opinion that the survey needs to be released in its raw form to boost the confidence of residents because if there are any discrepancies council is “going to get hammered.”
“If you want to use credibility fast, you do not release it to the public. It is what it is and it needs to be released to the public,” he said, adding the raw data and comments will likely come out if council doesn’t make it available themselves.
Sargent assured Primeau there would be no discrepancies and went on to share her thoughts as to why someone would sit on the fact that the results were publicly available without telling someone at the county.
“I suspect it was because people were fearful that this session that I’m having with you right now would not happen and that the results of the survey would not be shared.
“Everything that you need to know is in this particular report. This is the survey results, it has all the data that I put into a report format. The only thing I did not include were the verbatim comments.”
Hall said the way the results are laid out in the report is satisfactory and they are now public.
“If people have any further questions on it, by all means they can contact their councillor, or administration, but I don’t see any point in re-releasing something that was never supposed to have been released,” she said.
Coun. Jared Stitsen agreed, calling the report an “awesome tool to help address the concerns in the community. It was very well done and it’s something that is going to help us a lot.”
After the meeting, deputy reeve Brian Coleman gave his perspective on both surveys.
“I think they reflected similar attitudes. I think both surveys identify that the county has a communications problem. The county is working very diligently to fix that communications problem. We have lots of work to do yet, but it will be part of our strategic plan for sure. We now have a communications person on staff and I think both council and administration know that we have to move towards more transparency in what we publish, he said.”
In that spirit, Coleman has requested that the county’s full budget document be made available online to support that transparency.
“Communications is a big issue and I think if we can move forward with that we’ll see a more positive attitude towards the county,” said Coleman.
Sargent’s completed report can be found on the Westlock County website.
