Leavenworth City staff to adopt county'run mass-notification system after demo

Leavenworth City commissioners heard a presentation from county emergency-management staff about AlertSense (now Connexus), a mass-notification system that sends simultaneous voice, text and email alerts to residents and businesses in selected geographic areas.

City staff and the presenters said the system can target polygon, circle and freehand map areas so administrators can notify only people in a specific neighborhood, avoid sending messages to people inside a hostage perimeter and differentiate emergency messages from nonemergency notices such as event reminders.

The demonstration showed how administrators can draft a message, select prebuilt templates, add attachments or a flyer and send to internal groups (volunteers, spotters, staff) or the public directory. The presenters said the contractor obtained the countywide 9-1-1 data file and that the system can reach landlines, voice-over-IP business phones, cell phones, texts and email addresses at the same time.

Why it matters: Commissioners said they want more direct, timely ways to reach residents during evacuations, boil-water orders and other local incidents. The system would give city staff administrative control to send city-specific notices while remaining part of the county'managed parent account, the presenters said.

Details from the presentation included: the platform records delivery tallies (how many messages were delivered, failed or opened), allows scheduled sends and provides reporting that lists failure counts (but not the underlying reasons). Presenters said administrators can see how many recipients opened a message and whether a voice message was answered.

Commission discussion focused on public sign-ups and message scope. Presenters said broad public adoption is the biggest challenge and that sign-up can be done by QR code, the app, or a website sign-up; users can also opt out of particular notification channels and specify preferences (for example, only receiving app alerts rather than voice calls). Presenters said countywide sign-up numbers have varied over time; one presenter cited "8,000 some odd" public sign-ups countywide as an approximate historical figure and another cited an example area reach of about 4,263 contacts via the combined channels when a polygon was selected.

City staff and commissioners discussed keeping weather alerts with the county to avoid duplicative emergency messages and the risk of "crying wolf." Commissioners indicated they preferred city staff to use the system mainly for city news and events and let the county remain the primary source for routine emergency-weather warnings. Several commissioners then agreed that staff should pursue setup and training.

Next steps: Presenters said they will train designated city administrators (examples given included Melissa and Penny on staff) and that the county would create the city as a sub-account within the county'managed parent account. Commissioners indicated consensus to proceed and staff said they would follow up to arrange training and sign-up.

Provenance: Presentation excerpt (topicintro): "Is to provide some kind of a, an additional communication system to our residents and business owners about, texting, to their phones" (transcript block starting at 116.04 seconds). Presentation excerpt (topfinish): "So okay. Yeah. We will we will do that then." (transcript block starting at 1672.17 seconds).

Speakers cited: County emergency-management representative (presenter); Zach (presenter/demo); Rachel (presenter/demo); Scott (city staff/commissioner); Commissioner Martin (commissioner).