Last month, Thorold City Hall launched the first edition of its new monthly e-newsletter called 'City Hall News.'
The initiative is the brainchild of the city’s brand new community relations specialist Megan McRae, who has been working at City Hall for just over three months.
“It’s been incredible so far,” says McRae, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “It feels like it’s been a lot longer. I look forward to continuing to strengthen those relations with people in the community.”
McRae was born and raised in Niagara so she was familiar with Thorold, but she grew a whole new understanding of the local community when she started working at City Hall.
“You don’t fully understand the warmth of the community here until you are exposed to it, until you’re actually thrown into it and you experience it for yourself,” she says. “That’s something I’m starting to see now that I’m part of the Thorold team and Thorold community.”
In her role as community relations specialist every day is different.
“When I roll out of bed I’ll have my coffee and do a quick scan of social media,” McRae says. “Once I get to work I’ll usually spend the first 20, 30 minutes doing the same thing and seeing who is interacting with us or who is commenting on our posts. After that each day is completely different. Part of my job is supporting all of the departments that we have at city hall.”
With McRae’s hiring the city is making a renewed effort to have a social media presence, which is not always easy.
“No matter how many great posts that we put out or positive stories that were shared, there’s always going to be negative comments that exist in this world,” McRae says. “We can only control so much. If there is a negative toned comment that uses any sort of vulgar words or offensive, rude comments we will absolutely not engage in that.”
The City of Thorold has often been accused of not being transparent enough and McRae is trying to change this perception one day at a time.
“I think that was one of the objectives for hiring of this position, really strengthening those relationships with people in the community,” she says. “Just figuring out ways that the city can best support community groups, initiatives, ongoing events and that sort of thing.”
An important piece of that work is the new monthly e-newsletter which already has over 400 subscribers.
“I think it was kind of a way for us to make that effort to better connect with our community,” McRae says. “There’s lots of incredible things happening in Thorold. There’s a lot of really passionate community groups that do such fantastic initiatives. It’s a way for us, City Hall, to connect with our residents and the local community members.”
