We have received questions about how CivicReady operates, when the City sends out messages, and what format we send them in, so we are sharing the answers to the most frequently asked questions below:
1. Why did the City of Santa Rosa switch from Nixle to CivicReady?
CivicReady provides multiple new advantages to Santa Rosa residents from previous services, including more precise geotargeting, fewer service interruptions, improved flexibility, and control over the distribution of text messages, and now residents can identify their preferred written and spoken languages and written messages are automatically translated into that preferred language.
2. What types of messages will be sent as emails?
- Incident press releases
- Notice to prepare for a weather event or planned power outage
- Notice of scheduled police or fire activities that may impact specific neighborhoods, like trainings or road closures
- Community events or meetings hosted by police or fire departments
3. What types of messages will be sent as text messages?
- Mass evacuations
- Severe weather events, like Red Flag warnings, etc.
- Natural or man-made catastrophes
- Imminent or active threats, such as active shooter incident
- At-risk missing persons
- Major police activity, impacting many people/households/businesses, requiring shelter in place, and/or significant impacts to traffic
- Other emergencies in which the scale of the incident exceeds personal notification capacity
- Routine tests of the CivicReady mass communications system
4. Why am I still not receiving any CivicReady messages from Santa Rosa?
There are three possible reasons why you may not be receiving CivicReady messages from the City of Santa Rosa:
Reason 1: Not all CivicReady messages are delivered as text messages. Public Safety Alerts are delivered by email always, text message when imminent/urgent, and very rarely as a voice call. Public Safety News items are delivered by email only. If you would like to modify your settings to receive email messages also, please click here.
Reason 2: Upon subscribing to CivicReady, you received a verification text (from [email protected] or 38276) or email (from [email protected] or [email protected]) to confirm your subscription. If you missed the confirmation email or text, please click on the "Modify or Unsubscribe" button to access your account and re-trigger the verification. You will not receive messages until you verify your account.
Reason 3: Perhaps the messages are landing in your SPAM or Junk folder. Please take a moment to add “CivicReady” as a trusted contact to your address book:
5. I signed up to receive text messages, why do I only receive them sporadically?
Santa Rosa Police and Fire departments will only send text messages when your immediate action or attention is needed due to urgent circumstances, and after 6 a.m. and before 10 p.m. Example text message events include imminent or active threats, at-risk missing persons, other incidents that require rapid response and communication, and severe weather events, like Red Flag Warnings, etc. Only under EXTREME EMERGENCY situations, like mass evacuations for a wildfire, will you receive a text message overnight. Reminder, SoCoAlert is still Santa Rosa's primary emergency alerting system for large-scale emergencies. Take a few minutes now to subscribe to SoCoAlert or update your contact information.
6. I was already subscribed to Nixle, why do I have to subscribe to CivicReady?
The contact information of previous Nixle subscribers to the Santa Rosa Police and Fire Department Nixle accounts, is a proprietary list “owned” by Nixle. Thus, the City of Santa Rosa could not automatically add subscribers to the new platform. Please subscribe to CivicReady at SRCity.org/CivicReady and then verify your account.
7. Why did I get cut-off and a few random text messages early in the morning? Is this SPAM?
No, the messages were not SPAM, but regrettably, those early morning text messages were sent in error. Texts will typically start with SRFD or SRPD and will contain a link for additional details. Our procedure also outlines that text messages should not be sent between the hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless there are extenuating circumstances. In our effort to deliver timely messages to the public, there are multiple City employees with the ability to send CivicReady messages any day and at any time. While staff has undergone several hours of training already, we continue to train and troubleshoot our system and processes. Thank you for your continued patience as we onboard this new software.
8. Who can help me with CivicReady questions or concerns?
Visit SRCity.org/CivicReady for more information about CivicReady and to review frequently asked questions or direct your CivicReady questions to the City’s Communications and Intergovernmental Relations Office (CIRO) at [email protected] or 707-543-4777.