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; Bald Head Island in Brunswick County, population 278.
Those are some of the 45 localities or government agencies across the state who’ve recently launched the texting service TextMyGov, which not only facilitates mass text alerts but also gives residents the capability to make their own requests or inquiries about things ranging from potholes to water bills.
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A Utah-based government technology company launched the texting service several years ago with one unique quirk: they largely cater to smaller local governments — the kinds 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 whom were drawn to its relative simplicity and low cost. Residents in these places may notice a sleek lime-green widget standing out on their otherwise outdated town website, imploring them to sign up for the texting service.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 Sonntag told Carolina Public Press.
“Text messages have a 98% open rate,” he said. “So why not reach residents where they are?”
The reception from local government administrators who’ve purchased the texting service has been a mixed bag. Some praised TextMyGov’s functionality compared to older mass notification systems, while at least one North Carolina town canceled already because of a lack of engagement. For many, the texting service, which has spread rapidly, is so new that it’s too early to tell whether residents will latch on to it.
Woodfin, a Buncombe County town of 8,000 people just north of Asheville, announced last month that they’d 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 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 actually was looking to move on from its previous notification system, which had very little buy-in from residents.
So far, the transition has been overwhelmingly positive, Ketchum said.
The city had 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 said. 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 our 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,” Ketchum said.
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 when it comes to things like robust websites and online services, she said.
Think: paying a parking ticket online, for example.
“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 benefit greatly 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 the government.
“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.”
In Swepsonville, town administrator Brad Bullis said TextMyGov was a good addition to the Alamance County town’s communications, and that it’s been particularly helpful answering residents’ questions about utilities.
“Staff is pleased with how we’ve been able to reach/communicate with residents to this point,” he wrote.
TextMyGov hasn’t been a success story everywhere, though.
The town of Kernersville, a suburb of 28,000 people sandwiched between Winston-Salem and Greensboro, first bought the texting service in 2020 but discontinued it about three months ago after underwhelming reception from the public.
“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,” Chief Information Officer Adam Hutchins said.
“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 better detailed responses. He’s not sure whether that will come from a contracted service or something that’s created in-house.
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’s hopeful it will keep the bond strong 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.
“So we are definitely looking at other ways to kind of 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.”
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