Communications staff defends Hootsuite, archives and Canva costs; committee asks for efficiency review

At the April 28 Finance Committee meeting Whitney, a communications staff member, described the town’s current software stack for public communications and why staff recommended retaining multiple subscriptions.

Whitney said the town likely needs to upgrade Canva in the next two years because account limits are tied to email-sending volume; she also said the social-media scheduler (Hootsuite or similar) retains a year of posting history and analytics that the communications team uses for annual comparisons. Whitney explained that ArchiveSocial (about $7,500 in the budget) stores an auditable archive of social-media posts and provides an easy search function for public-record and FOIA requests; she described it as “an insurance policy” for retrieving historical posts by keyword.

Committee members asked whether Canva’s content-planner feature could replace the separate scheduler and whether the town needed all subscriptions at their current levels. Whitney said she would review Canva’s planner and identify overlaps, but noted that switching schedulers can cause loss of historical analytics. The committee asked staff to return with an efficiency review showing whether subscriptions could be consolidated without losing necessary archives or analytics.

Why it matters: Communications software is an ongoing general-fund expense; the committee sought assurance the town is buying the most cost-effective configuration while keeping records searchable for public requests.

Ending: Staff committed to reviewing subscriptions and returning with recommendations on consolidation, upgrade timing, and archive retention.