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Health & Fitness

Would Portsmouth Benefit from a Town Facebook Page? Would You Use It?

Can Facebook help Portsmouth communicate better with its citizens?

regarding the use of Facebook for public communications.

Residents were asked if they thought it would benefit Newport.  A majority of those responding felt that it would be beneficial and 68% said that they would use it.

The poll was prompted by a discussion on the "Knowing Newport" community forum about the issue of communications between the City Council and the public. This topic was also discussed at the Newport City Council strategic planning session, according to Mayor Stephen Waluk.

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He told Newport Patch in an e-mail that "The City Manager is exploring the issue and is going to report back to us with options," adding that, "There is no policy against social media and we should set something up to improve our overall communications with the public."

See the article at .

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In view of the major public communciations issues that we had in Portsmouth during Hurricane Irene, I would hope that our new town administrator and the town leadership will consider looking into the use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, among other means, such as CodeRed telephone notifications, to keep Portsmouth residents informed.

Do you think the use of Facebook by the town would benefit Portsmouth? If there was a Facebook page managed from the Town Hall, would you use it?

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