Lake Stevens staff advises caution on council-run social media; council may operate personal pages but bears records responsibility

City staff told the Lake Stevens Council April 14 that creating a city-managed council social-media presence poses significant public-records and operational risks, and recommended council members operating personal or member-managed pages accept responsibility for capturing and retaining public records.

Staff said vendor options and Facebook settings were vetted but that the city could not guarantee retention and comment-control requirements on third-party platforms. The clerk and records staff recommended council members capture each post by screenshot, email it to themselves with a subject line describing the topic for records-searchability, and re-capture any subsequent comments or edits so the city can respond to public-records requests. IT staff highlighted metadata and OCR issues and noted that some archival tools can OCR images, but that public-records staff must configure systems properly to include that content in searches.

Council members expressed differing preferences: some favored continuing to ask staff to post city summaries to the official city Facebook page and develop automated YouTube timestamps for meeting topics; others said they prefer a private council member page to engage constituents but acknowledged the records-management burden. Staff and the city attorney warned of litigation and discovery risks (citing Spokane Valley cases where social-media records became the subject of litigation) and said the city would remain ultimately responsible for producing records if requested.

Direction: Staff will continue to explore technical options (including YouTube timestamping and limited recap automation) and provided guidance for council members who choose to post: capture screenshots promptly, use city email for follow-up, and coordinate with records officers when a public-records request arrives.