By Cecilia Nasmith

The Municipality of Port Hope is pleased to announce the launch of My Port Hope – a new community-engagement tool and council newsletter that allows residents, business owners and visitors to share their ideas with council, municipal staff and members of the community.

Mayor Bob Sanderson stated in the municipality's press release that community engagement continues to be a priority with members of council.

“The launch of this on-line tool and newsletter offers another channel of two-way communication between the municipality and our community, and delivers a platform to continue to circulate ideas and feedback,” Sanderson said.

“The Council Newsletter will be a conduit of information to our community, providing Strategic Plan and major-project updates on a bi-month basis and ensuring that we continue to deliver consistent, open and transparent communications from our council and staff.”

My Port Hope is powered by community-engagement industry leaders Bang The Table, a company dedicated to promoting and encouraging on-line public participation. Specializing in municipal government, the tailor-made on-line tool provides various types of collaborative consultation, including the use of polls, surveys, on-line forums, idea-sharing mechanism, Q&A postings, image sharing and more. It's a platform a number of municipalities have adopted for community members to provide constructive feedback and share positive ideas, solutions and opportunities.

My Port Hope is now live and has begun hosting a few preliminary consultation files to encourage community members to try it out. Staff will continue to add new public-participation forums to the site while working towards centralizing all of the community consultation initiatives on to this new platform.

Users can register at myporthope.ca to use the new engagement tool and receive the bi-monthly Council Newsletter. The site will be monitored and updated regularly, and information will be shared with council in accordance with the municipality's standard practice.