By JALEN WADE
Courtesy of the City of College Park
College Park began sending text messages in March to keep residents up to date on events, news and emergencies.
Ryna Quiñones, the city’s communications and events manager, said using texts will help the city communicate with residents more effectively.
“We’re always looking for new ways to reach our residents,” Quiñones said. “We want to make sure that we are getting them news and information in ways that they want to get the information, and one of the ways is through text message.”
Civic Plus Mass Communications will provide the service.
To sign up for information about news and events, residents can text COLLEGEPARK to 38276, and for emergency alerts, they can text CPALERTS to the same number.
Mayor Fazlul Kabir said the city has been looking into new ways to interact with its residents.
Alerts can be geo-targeted to specific areas, districts, neighborhoods or even streets. For instance, if a fallen tree is blocking a road in a particular neighborhood, the city can alert residents in that area.
Lakeland Civic Association President Robert Thurston predicted the text alerts will be popular because they are easy to sign up for.
“I hope this text alert will be a tool to reach those in the community [who need] to access information,” Thurston said, “especially our senior population that has limited access.”
Daniel Oates, president of the Calvert Hills Citizens Association, said this new system has the potential to reach everyone in the city. He noted that some in the Calvert Hills community receive text updates from the University of Maryland’s alert system, but that information is limited to a small area surrounding the school.
“There’s right now some people who are affiliated at the university getting text alerts about, if there’s a burglary, or, you know, ‘Hey, stay away from this area because of XYZ thing,’” Oates said. “But there’s [previously] not a way that I’m aware of for the city to do the same kind of communication by text. So I welcome creating more awareness of what’s going on in the community.”
