Council staff present social media policy; members raise record-retention and archiving concerns

County staff presented a draft social media policy for county council departments intended to provide an outward-facing channel for public notices and announcements and to set expectations for moderation and retention. A department staff member described the policy as a communication tool "outward facing to the public" and said posts and comments may be archived and that vulgar or unruly comments could be deleted and users blocked. The staff member said the county uses an archiving service through its vendor (Civic Plus) to preserve posts and comments for right-to-know requests and estimated that archiving would cost about $7,000. The policy, as discussed, would let departments post official notices while keeping postings separate from individual councilmembers’ personal or campaign pages; councilmembers would be able to submit content to the department for posting but would not post directly from a department account. Council members raised questions about document-retention obligations and whether elected-official pages are subject to the same archival requirements; a council member asked how an official or citizen would access posts and was advised that social media links would be accessible from the county website and that searching the platform name plus "county council" should locate the page. Participants flagged the risk that deleting or altering social-media posts could complicate responses to right-to-know requests and records retention obligations. The agenda listed a resolution (No. 2025) to approve the social media policy, and the transcript records discussion and questions about the policy and archiving cost, but no final vote or recorded adoption appears in the provided transcript segment.