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Montrose County communications director cites steep social reach, outlines 2026 crisis and outreach plans
Summary
Montrose County’s communications director reviewed 2025 digital metrics — including nearly 11 million Facebook views and 563,000 page views on montrosecounty.net — and outlined 2026 priorities: water-focused outreach, recruitment videos, a crisis communications playbook and improved accessibility monitoring.
Bridal Story, Montrose County communications director, told commissioners on April 6 that the county’s communications operation posted broadly in 2025 and plans several new outreach and crisis‑response initiatives for 2026.
"So for the county, you can see we posted 920 items. Across all of our Facebook accounts, we had, yeah, 10,000,000, almost 11,000,000, Facebook views," Bridal Story said, summarizing last year’s reach. She said the county’s main website, montrosecounty.net, had 563,000 page views in 2025 and that the county’s combined websites totaled about 1.4 million page views.
The presentation described a three‑part focus for 2026: proactive topic campaigns, improved internal tools and strengthened emergency communications. Bridal Story said the communications team will run a water‑focused podcast and community video series, produce recruitment and “day in the life” videos for county departments and continue posting weekly construction updates for the North Campus project.
On emergency preparedness, Bridal Story said the team is developing a crisis communications plan with template holding statements and graphics so staff can post a message within minutes and an incident communications plan within one hour. "You have 3 minutes to post some kind of holding statement to social media," she said, noting the team’s goal to have templates ready in advance.
The director also discussed accessibility monitoring and vendor collaboration. She said the county tracks accessibility across its sites and aims to stay above an 85% compliance threshold, while working with content contributors to reduce accessibility problems in uploaded PDFs and complex graphics.
Bridal Story highlighted coordination with regional public information officers: the county participates in a Montrose area JIC and a West Region PIO group, and staff completed FEMA public information certifications to increase redundancy among communicators.
Commissioners asked how the county could raise accessibility scores and how social posts with graphics should be made more accessible; Bridal Story said content contributors and IT must work together, and that longer or complex graphics require accompanying descriptive text.
The presentation closed with a reminder that the communications office fields hundreds of requests each year and is implementing a ticketing system to better track workload and response times. Bridal Story also noted ongoing projects such as scholarship processing, time‑capsule exhibits and the Remacher Trail mapping effort. The board did not take formal action on the presentation.
The county work session adjourned after community updates later in the morning.
