By T. Scott Boatright
GRAMBLING — Grambling Councilman John Brown announced during Thursday’s City Council meeting that four Civic Ready sign-up days will be held August to try to bolster the number of city residents able to receive the emergency notifications.
Those dates where city residents can sign up to receive Civic Ready notifications will be from noon – 1 p.m. and 5-6 p.m. on Aug. 5-6 and Aug. 11-Aug. 12.
CivicReady, a cloud-based system, an emergency notification and critical event management system provided by CivicPlus that empowers local government administrators to expedite crisis response and incident reporting to keep their teams up-to-date with critical information so that their constituents can stay safe.
That cloud-based system offers a variety of ways to send and receive notifications concerning weather, public safety, city notifications and any other information city officials determine that residents need to know in rapid fashion.
Best of all, Brown said, the service is free of charge.
Brown said that only around 4% of city residents are enrolled in the program, a fact he said he finds quite troubling.
In announcing the sign-up dates, Brown left his usual seat during Council meetings and went to a podium he turned directly toward the audience in attendance at the meeting to look them in the eyes while he made a passionate plea for more people to take advantage of the Civic Ready service.
“I want to magnify the importance of signing up for Civic Ready,” Brown said. “By now, everyone is aware that on July 4, residents in central Texas experienced a catastrophic flood event. The death toll as of July 15 was 133 with an additional approximately 100 people still missing.
“We the governing body of the city of Grambling have an emergency communication system to warn residents of emergency situations such as tornadoes, hurricanes, catastrophic flooding, interruption of public services, road closures, etc. We put this in place because we care about you, your family, your friends, and your neighbors.”
Those warnings could also include shelter in place or evacuation warnings in the event of a train derailment or hazard material release from vehicles traversing Interstate 20, Brown said.
“All you need to sign up is a cell phone,” Brown said. “The only information needed is your name, your address and your cell phone number, or if you like, your home phone number and your email address. And we need to know the type of alerts you want to receive. Your birthdate or social security number is not needed.
“We don’t give your information to anyone else and it only takes three to five minutes to sign up.”
Grambling residents can also sign up online at Public Signup.
“We only have around 240 people signed up right now, out of roughly 5,000,” Brown said. “I, along with our mayor and City Council, are saddened by the low participation number involved with this free service. We need more to be signed up for the good of everyone. Please get the word out about these sign up days and let’s work together to try and keep everyone as safe as we can.”
