WAUSAU, WI (WSAU) — The new proposed social media policy for the city of Wausau won’t be implemented this year.
At Tuesday night’s city council meeting, the council decided to send the policy back to the HR committee for additional revisions. Members of the council were concerned the language was not clear if the policy applied to city employees, or elected officials as well. Mayor Robert Mielke says the policy, which has been worked on by city staff for about a year, is mainly about using common sense when posting to social media.
“It’s just a policy, kind of using some common sense frankly for our city employees. The original draft also had talked about possibly including council members or elected officials. And that’s probably going to be separate now.”
Members of the council on the HR committee commented that there is a need for a policy based on government communication, including social media. There was also talk that the policy can be changed and amended after it’s put into place as social media is constantly evolving.
Alderman Pat Peckham also suggested an amendment to the policy that was approved by the council. Mayor Mielke describes the amendment as, “If something is deemed inappropriate or vulgar or offensive that type of thing they would have to remove that. And they would try in their best effort to get ahold of the person who sent that out, that message, we have removed this because we have deemed it inappropriate.”
While the policy will be reworked, Meilke believes the policy should have been implemented several years ago like other cities in the country. “Again, it’s just something that should have been done a long time ago. But you know it’s a policy just about every other city in Wisconsin, if not the country, has. It’s another one of those things we brought forward, okay folks like so many other things lets catch up and get with the times.”
Eventually, the council unanimously agreed to send the social media policy back to the human resources committee to continue work on clarifying who the policy is for. Mielke expects the revisions to be finished within the next month or two and an updated version to come before the council again in early 2019.
The city council also approved an amendment that raises sewer service charges in the city. It will be the first raise in water rates in eight years. The rise is mainly to cover the costs of a new water treatment plant as the current one hasn’t been updated since the 1980s. The new rate will raise resident’s water rate 8 to 10 dollars per quarter starting the spring of 2019.
