3. It's a small township - very small, and as was pointed out here, my annual budget is vanishingly small. How small? Well, let's just say that if I bought a mid-range laptop and a tank of gas, I'd blow through my budget....
....This letter - and you have to understand that this is a first for the community - will have more impact that you might think, because it represents the first time Emergency Management as a concept will be clearly tied back to the Township. Until now, it's been ad-hoc and reactive via the Fire Company.
In addition, I'm operating and planning in the context of my (much) larger neighboring townships - although we're not an actual regional emergency management entity, I am working so closely with them that we're acting as a regional entity.
I think it's important to understand that Bucks County is almost at large at the state of Rhode Island, and it's got three distinct "zones" if you would. The southern zone is a crowded suburb of philadelphia, very dense. The middle zone is a blend of open space and broad suburban tracts of housing. It's very nice, very "Norman Rockwell" in many ways.
Then there's the North section - where I live. Up here, it's still rural. There are hunting grounds, people have rifle ranges in their back yards, you'll find wide open spaces and huge forested areas. There are plenty of places up here with no cell service. We have no police department, just a state police barracks. Townships are the government entity and they are small and provide very limited services. For example, the township we're talking about with this letter has no full-time administrative staff. The board of Supervisors consists of three people, all part time. There's one person on the road crew. They own a small dump truck (a Ford F550) with a plow and a front loader. There's no "township park" There's no pool, no library - really nothing much more than a roads department, a zoning officer (part time) and meeting minutes for the township generally take up one sheet of paper.
So into this context, we bring in a new government "service" - which is mandated by state law. They have to have an emergency plan. They have to keep it up to date and they have to provide the county with the plan. So it's into this context that "Emergency Management" will be introduced. Thus my need to set low expectations from the get-go.
I was wondering how you are going to mail it out.
Would including it with the tax assessment statements be possible.
If you could include some of the ideas you explained to us about it being a new federally mandated service and that you are limited in what you can do without tax increases it might help them.
If it was piggy backed in the tax notice envelope you might save a bit of your budget and it would be less likely to be just disregarded and trashed.
You could place a copy in the paper to reach the people who don't get tax notices.
Hmmm, how hard is it to work up into a story for the reporters? You might even be able to get an editor doing a comment piece for you.
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