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Council adopts SMS privacy policy to enable TextPower notifications for utility and city alerts
Summary
The Coldwater City Council on Sept. 8 approved Resolution 25-94 and Policy P-25-02, allowing the city to implement TextPower SMS messaging for utility outage notifications and optional city alerts, with privacy protections and geofenced messaging capabilities.
The City Council of Coldwater on Sept. 8 adopted Resolution 25-94 and Policy P-25-02 to authorize use of the TextPower SMS platform for utility and optional city communications. Stephanie Burdick (BPU/Staff) told the council the policy is a vendor requirement and establishes privacy and usage rules needed to proceed with implementation.
Stephanie said the TextPower service will provide auto opt-in for utility-related outage texts and an optional opt-in for city-related messages such as road closures and brush pickup. The platform supports geofencing so messages can be sent to a segmented population rather than mass texting, and it will provide redundancy after the internet outage the city experienced in May. "Having a policy like this is a requirement of TextPower. So in order to move forward with this, I'm asking for council approval of this policy, which governs the use of messaging and protects the privacy of our customers," Stephanie said.
Council moved to adopt Resolution 25-94 and Policy P-25-02; the motion carried on a voice vote. Staff said implementation will be coordinated by the BPU and customer-service staff and that the policy sets privacy rules, opt-in/opt-out options and geo-targeting procedures.
