In mid-February, the Municipality of Shawville installed a new public alert system to help inform residents on important developments such as hydro outages and boil advisories.

The new system is powered by Telmatik, a call management service that . . .

enables the municipality to send automated announcements directly to residents via text, voicemail and email.

Telmatik was recommended to the municipality by Jessica Nilsson, a water treatment specialist for both Shawville and Campbell’s Bay. “I really like the way it can communicate any notices and messages fast,” said Nilsson.

The system can filter contacts by street to ensure that notifications are only sent to affected residents. “Only the residents in that immediate neighbourhood will ever be affected, so that’s the nice thing about this system,” said Shawville Councillor Richard Armitage.

Previously, the municipality would rely on volunteers to share important announcements through phone trees, where each volunteer would be responsible for calling their contacts until the news had completely spread. Telmatik has alleviated the municipality’s reliance on phone tree volunteers, but the new system still needs work.

Not every resident has been entered into the system’s contact list. Because the system’s database has been built using information from the existing phone tree, new residents and those without a landline are most likely unaccounted for. “A lot of people use their cellphones over [landlines] nowadays and it’s getting harder to get the cellphone numbers,” said Scott Campbell, a clerk for the municipality and head of the boil water advisory project.

Residents can register their information through the municipality’s website at www.town.shawville.qc.ca/citizen-services/public-alert-system/ or by contacting town hall.

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