San Benito County supervisors Tuesday will consider paying an outside company $30,000 to handle social media for the sheriff’s office.
It’s on the agenda for Tuesday morning’s meeting.
According to the detailed agenda summary in the meeting agenda as provided by the sheriff’s office:
The San Benito County Sheriff’s Office would like to enter into a contract with Cole Pro Media for assistance with our media messaging and social media presence. Currently, Cole Pro Media assists with the following Sheriff’s Offices in California; Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, San Mateo County, Marin County, Sonoma County, Tuolumne County, Stanislaus County, San Joaquin County, El Dorado County, Amador County, Nevada County, Placer County and Solano County. Online communications for our office involves more than just social marketing and these messages need to be carefully crafted. Cole Pro Media can help us ensure that our critical updates, safety announcements and celebratory posts reach the right people at the right time in the right way.
Cole Pro Media brings years of media experience with law enforcement agencies to help us do all of these things correctly. As our office strives to maintain our transparency, Cole Pro Media will help us properly uphold the privacy protections legally afforded to our community members. Cole Pro Media is a trailblazing social media manager that has worked with dozens of cities, sheriffs’ offices and police departments throughout California since 2013. With extensive experience as on-camera journalists and social media mavens, they offer a variety of services that can be catered to the specific needs of our office. These services include content management, content creation, staff training and crisis communication.
Our Office is just beginning our important presence on “Social Media” platforms. This brings many positives to our office and our community, but it also poses some challenges. Many of these challenges are making sure we are doing things legally, ethically and tastefully. Social media provides an opportunity for our office to put out information on critical incidents. By creating excellent communication tools, we will be able to create dynamic, reliable, up-to-the-minute social media channels where we are able to focus on the facts. When our community is able to count on our Social Media presence to keep them in the loop, they will look to us for “news” – not a third party.
As we enter into this new arena, and continue to put our news out the “old fashioned way” in the format of press-releases, Cole Pro Media can give us the guidance and direction to keep us safe and effectively communicate with our community. They will help us craft and release messages pertaining to updates on emergency situations such as natural disasters, breaking news about matters of public safety, news and stories about local heroes and other aspects of public interest, warm wishes to community members on holidays including important traffic and safety reminders and also BOLs, Amber alerts and other updates that can assist investigators in their cases.
This is a 12-month contract commencing July 1, 2018 and ending June 30, 2019. Services were used in July and August on a month-to-month basis in order to determine whether the services would be beneficial to the agency. Cost will be divided between the sheriff’s operations, jail and grants budget units.
As for other items on the agenda, San Benito County supervisors will meet at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the San Benito County Administration Building, 481 Fourth St., to consider the following among items on the agenda:
- Consider formation of an information technology ad hoc committee to facilitate development and strategic planning about tech needs for the county, and appoint two supervisors to the panel.
- Approve memorandum of understanding with Mariposa County for California Small County Collaboration – Whole Person Care Pilot Program.
- Approve and authorize an affiliation agreement with Western Governors University for the placement of student nurses at the Public Health Services division.
- Approve work order for construction of the sheriff’s office locker room/showers project for $246,566.
- Approve contract with Cole Pro Media through June 30 not to exceed $30,000.
- Public hearing to adopt maximum allowable waste collection rates.
- Update board on the Bonnie View Road discussion from an intergovernmental meeting.
- Receive a report on implementation of Senate Bill 1 and possible impacts to the county’s roads program if Proposition 6 is successful; consider resolution to oppose Prop. 6.
- Accept all bids for the FEMA San Felipe Road-Tesquisquita Slough Bridge and find Graniterock Co. as the loweset responsive bidder; award contract for $31,950.
To read the full agenda, go here.
