Garfield County officials back testing a public "news email" to widen outreach

Garfield County’s communications team presented a plan to widen the county’s public outreach by adding a regularly distributed “news email” and making greater use of existing owned content channels, the board heard at a work session on Jan. 9.

Ronnell Lott, the county’s chief communications officer, told commissioners the county already has the tools and staff capacity to run a public email distribution and that the channel could repurpose press releases, short features and translated emergency messaging. "Communications is a core aspect to any successful endeavor, including exceptional service delivery for local government," Lott said. He argued that owned channels such as the county website, a blog and an email newsletter offer reliable reach that county officials can control.

Lott cited recent analytics to argue the county has the audience to justify expanded outreach: he said the main Garfield County website recorded about 84,000,000 visits in the reporting year (Lott noted that included bots and international traffic) and that related county sites—examples given were an airport site with roughly 900,000 visits—also draw substantial audiences. He said the county’s emergency-information feed, 911/dispatch alerts and a network of public information officers already provide an effective technical backbone for automated distribution and translation.

Commissioners discussed tradeoffs between different platforms. Lott warned that Facebook’s organic reach is low—"often cited between 1 to 3% of your followers seeing each post"—and said video posted to YouTube typically reaches a larger audience. Board members and staff emphasized that a public email list must be opt-in and that frequency should be manageable; commissioners suggested limiting length and keeping to one or two topics per message to avoid information overload.

Lott showed examples from other Colorado counties, including short press-release–style public emails and longer community newsletters. He recommended a middle path: a concise, regular digest that draws from the county’s existing press releases and department updates and that would be free to operate because the county already has the necessary platforms and staff.

On next steps, staff recommended and commissioners agreed to a staged approach: beta-test a news email, coordinate with department content contributors, and develop a formal social media policy before expanding interactive social channels. "This newsletter's a thumbs up," Chairman Jankowski said, indicating the board’s general support, though no formal motion or vote was recorded during the session.

The session also included a question about staffing transitions: one commissioner asked whether assigning a county communications role tied to the sheriff’s office could create a conflict because the incoming staffer had also worked as a radio DJ; the board raised the question for discussion and staff did not immediately take a formal position during the meeting.

The work session concluded with staff directed to draft implementation details and to return with a proposed approach and policy recommendations for the board to review.