CITY COUNCIL COMMUNICATION

As a person who values old-fashioned communications which include newsletters and paper documents, I rue the fact the City of Darwin Council seems to undertake most of its communication with ratepayers by Facebook and online.

This means that people like me who don’t have Facebook accounts and a preference for print reading miss out on information we should be entitled to as ratepayers.

An example of that is that a recent survey conducted among ratepayers on the subject of whether we would or wouldn’t like the third (green) bin, was conducted online. People like myself did not even know that there was a survey!

It seems the only piece of paper we get as ratepayers these days is a copy in the post of our rates notice together with an accompanying brochure. The council advertises in the Northern Territory news from time to time but not everybody reads the paper.

In similar vein, various of the aldermen have promised they will do newsletters for ratepayers in the wards. I have yet to see an aldermanic newsletter.

Communication needs to be broad based and it needs to reach everybody who contributes their rates to the council.