Minutes 09-12-2013 - Laserfiche WebLink

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would be hard to be spontaneous and quick to respond when seven different opinions are involved. Frank Clifton said the County needs some consistency. He said the constructive way to address this is to have a group of Commissioners volunteer to work with the PAO on any of these issues. He said Carla Banks has a lot of knowledge and will be excellent to work with. He questioned what role as a political leader the Board wants to have in the daily involvement of every department of County government. Commissioner Pelissier said their share is not responsible for the town and it is about coordination. She said there are different opinions and the Board needs to decide what the majority wants. She said this position should stay in the manager's office. She does not want this position to become a competition amongst and between Commissioners. She said this is about County services. Commissioner Rich said the conversation was not about who should have taken the lead. She said, at the point of an emergency, the press releases did not work. She said that the Board needs to get together and decide what the Commissioners want Carla Banks' role to be. She said she does not want to micro-manage the PAO. She said there is a feeling that the Board does not have a connection to Carla Banks, and she is the voice of the Board of County Commissioners. She said there needs to be some dialogue. Commissioner Price said that emergencies fall under Emergency Services or the Sheriff, and what Carla Banks did was supportive and should be commended. She said her concerns with regard to image, were just that she wanted input into the final design. Chair Jacobs said there is just not good communication between the Board of County Commissioners and the PAO. He said he used the tweets as an example. He said when the Board passes a resolution about the logo, and then it does not get put into the logo presentation, he gets the message that there is a dis-connect. Chair Jacobs said that Commissioner Price had volunteered to work with PAO on the logo. He said this is a new department, and there needs to be a pathway. He said there is no mechanism for the Chair to sit down with PAO. He asked Carla Banks to look at the purpose to determine how she would feed the Board of County Commissioners into the process. Chair Jacobs said this issue is structural and not personal. Commissioner Gordon said it is important to do the strategic communications plan and it is clear this will not be done tonight. She said the current plan from 1999 has a paragraph under press releases that should be in the new plan. She read it as follows. "The staff should develop and implement methods for addressing fast breaking and/or potentially controversial public relations issues in a timely manner so that the County can be in a position to anticipate these situations and respond with an appropriate message quickly and effectively when dealing with matters that are controversial or fast breaking." She said there is also some good language in the current plan regarding coordination related to emergency services, and she thought it should be included in the new plan. She reviewed this language which said that there should be an "action plan for communications between and among the county departments, other governmental agencies, the media, and the public in times of crisis, such as natural disasters, evacuations, and other emergency situations. Commissioner Gordon said that stating the intent to hire a public relations specialist should not be part of the plan. Instead, that is a method to implement the plan and should be part of the budget process. She said there needs to be a high priority on developing a strategic communications plan that takes into account the Board of County Commissioners' role. She said there is a difference between micro- management and having a high priority on the Board's role in setting policy. She said