County promises to be a better communicator
Commissioner April Stephens speaks during the board’s two-day planning retreat. She says the county’s communication efforts should meet people where they are.
Speaker after speaker said a public hearing on Johnston’s draft Unified Development Ordinance had caught them unaware. Although the County had announced the meeting in a news release and online, many said they had learned of the hearing at the last minute by word of mouth.
Clearly, Johnston isn’t always getting its message across, County Commissioners acknowledged during their planning retreat last month.
Johnston isn’t alone, said Amy Cannon of the N.C. Association of County Commissioners, the group that facilitated the planning retreat. “I think every county is struggling with finding the broadest ways of communicating with citizens,” she said. “People are very, very busy today, more so than we were years ago.”
So communication is hard, especially without newspapers, Cannon said. “Because 20 years ago, everybody had a newspaper dropped off at their door before 5 a.m., and that’s just not the case today," she said.
In response, more and more counties are beefing up their public information staffing, Cannon said. “So I think it is being creative and finding those avenues that you believe are helpful,” she said.
Commissioner April Stephens called for Johnston to meet its people where they are. She suggested looking to other counties that are enjoying more success in communicating with their residents.
“Clearly, they’re getting the message out somehow,” Stephens said. “Is it homing pigeons and letters in the mail, or is it a social media campaign or newsletter campaign?”
For her part, Stephens suggested a mailer to utility customers inviting them to subscribe to the County’s monthly newsletter. “So we’re hitting all the households, letting them know where to find that information,” she said.
Stephens also suggested something akin to a discussion board where residents and businesses could get plain-English answers to questions. “We see a lot of these conversations in other places,” she said, pointing, for example, to a moms’ group on Facebook. “What if we made a collaborative place for the County residents to get information or share what they’ve learned through dealing with the County?”
Whatever the methods, the onus is on Commissioners, Stephens said. “I want to be able to give direction to our PIO staff,” she said. “I don’t want to hear them getting beat up for lack of communication when we have to figure out where the people are.”
The Public Information Office is doing good and varied work, Stephens said. “When we’re putting out 12 social media posts a day and sending out newsletters and emails and sunshine lists, we’re clearly communicating. But where is that communication failing and where are we lacking?”
Commissioner Bill Stovall said he wanted the County to increase not only the breadth of its communication but the depth. “I’m a big fan of transparency,” he said, “and I think we need a level of public engagement such that the general public, when they see decisions being made, feel like these decisions have been done with them as opposed to being done to them. They may not like a decision, but they understand the necessity if you explain it to them.”
Commissioner Ted Godwin said citizens shouldered some responsibility in communicating with the County. “When you put it out there in numerous venues and nobody takes advantage of it, I agree you’ve got to meet them where they are,” he said. “But they have a responsibility too, in this democratic republic, to educate themselves on what’s going on and go to those sources and look for it.”
“I realize that we can’t make that happen,” Godwin said. “But I hope the general public, before they criticize too much, realize they have a responsibility to be aware of what’s going on.”
Page last updated on: March 13, 2026