Residents of North Carolina’s small towns are increasingly gaining the ability to text their local governments directly from their phones. Norlina in Warren County, population 930; Sims in Wilson County, population 282; and Bald Head Island in Brunswick County, population 278 are among the 45 localities or government agencies across the state that have recently launched the texting service TextMyGov.
TextMyGov not only facilitates mass text alerts but also gives residents the capability to make their own requests or inquiries about issues ranging from potholes to water bills. This Utah-based government technology company launched the texting service several years ago with one unique quirk: they primarily cater to smaller local governments—those that normally wouldn’t have the resources to fund or manage such a system.
The company has been aggressive in reaching out to small towns, many of which were drawn to TextMyGov’s relative simplicity and low cost. Residents in these communities may notice a sleek lime-green widget standing out on their otherwise outdated town websites, inviting them to sign up for the texting service.
TextMyGov doesn’t have an app, nor does it require users to create an account. “Just text us,” is the company’s tagline. That’s because having an app creates an unnecessary barrier to entry, TextMyGov marketing manager Sheppard Sontagg told Carolina Public Press. “Text messages have a 98% open rate,” he said. “So why not reach residents where they are?”
### Reception Among Local Governments
The reception from local government administrators who have purchased the texting service has been mixed. Some praised TextMyGov’s functionality compared to older mass notification systems, while at least one North Carolina town canceled the service due to a lack of engagement.
For many communities, the texting service, which has spread rapidly, is still so new that it’s too early to tell whether residents will fully adopt it.
Woodfin, a Buncombe County town of 8,000 people just north of Asheville, announced last month that they had begun using TextMyGov. Town manager Shannon Tuch told CPP that its two-way communication functionality made sense for town residents’ needs in the wake of Tropical Storm Helene, which ravaged the area last year.
“The French Broad River runs through Woodfin, and we have as much riverfront as Asheville does, but we’re much smaller,” Tuch said. “We also have a fair amount of steep slope property, so all of these things have kind of led us to recognize that emergency communications are very important.”
Improved emergency communications were also a key consideration for the City of Southport, a coastal enclave of 4,000 people in Brunswick County, which has used TextMyGov for just over a year.
“To be honest, we were headhunted by them,” public information officer ChyAnn Ketchum said of TextMyGov, which initially reached out to her office in 2023. It just so happened that Southport was already looking to replace its previous notification system, which had very little resident buy-in.
So far, the transition has been overwhelmingly positive, Ketchum said. The city experienced an unexpected surge of sign-ups after announcing the texting service. Under the previous alert system, only 26 residents had signed up for text alerts. That number under TextMyGov is approaching 1,200.
“It’s been good for non-emergency communication too,” Ketchum added. She now sends out a monthly newsletter through the texting platform. “That was a huge thing for me, looking at the new mass notification system, because our community members and residents associated the old system with emergencies, and I wanted to kind of break that stigma—that just because you’re hearing from the city does not necessarily mean that there is an emergency.”
### Bridging the Digital Divide
Mary Feeney, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs who researches public management and technology policy, said text-based services like TextMyGov can improve what academics call “the digital divide.”
Smaller and more rural localities lag far behind in terms of robust websites and online services such as paying parking tickets online. “The primary predictors of how digitized the city is in that sort of context are technical capacity and financial resources,” Feeney said. “So the richer that community is, the more digitized they are.”
Even so, rural places could greatly benefit from digitization, where residents may live farther away from town centers or county seats of government.
A texting service like TextMyGov can make digitization easier, Feeney said, because of its low barrier to entry for both users and governments.
“A text-based system addresses a lot of issues related to the digital divide, because there are still people who don’t have smartphones and don’t have internet access,” she added. “So it’s data-driven, but it’s also less costly to maintain from a coding perspective.”
### Varied Experiences Across Towns
In Swepsonville, Alamance County, town administrator Brad Bullis said TextMyGov was a good addition to the town’s communications and particularly helpful in answering residents’ questions about utilities.
“Staff is pleased with how we’ve been able to reach and communicate with residents to this point,” he wrote.
However, TextMyGov has not been a success story everywhere. The town of Kernersville, a suburb of 28,000 people between Winston-Salem and Greensboro, first adopted the texting service in 2020 but discontinued it about three months ago after underwhelming public engagement.
“TextMyGov was presented as a ‘Set it and forget it’ type solution but we found that we were having to constantly monitor it for questions outside of the scope we had set up,” said Chief Information Officer Adam Hutchins.
“After over four years of use, we decided the public wasn’t using it as much as we had anticipated, so we stopped the service.” Hutchins said the town is now considering shifting toward an AI-driven communications system that could provide more detailed responses. He’s not sure whether that will come from a contracted service or be developed in-house.
### Looking Ahead
In Woodfin, Tuch said TextMyGov will be one of several ways the town can reach residents.
While the texting service is not an all-in-one solution, she is hopeful it will help maintain a strong bond between locals and their government.
“Engaging with your residents as a multi-pronged strategy, and communication tools like this are just one way to build community connection,” she said. “We are definitely looking at other ways to build community, and that is one big takeaway from Helene: the stronger the community connection, the stronger the community, and the more resilient the community is.”
https://carolinapublicpress.org/73380/texting-service-small-nc-towns-trying/