This article appeared in the January 2007 edition of Fort Collins Forum

Got Information?

By Deni La Rue/Larimer County Community Information Manager

Three years ago, in this column, I let you know about the County's free subscription service. When that article was written we had 16 topics you could subscribe to, we now have 27! Our subscription service allows you to go to the County's web site, the Virtual Courthouse, at www.larimer.org/subscriptions.cfm, type in an email address, and then check the topics you want to be email-notified about when anything is published on the web site about them.

This winter, for example, we have urged people, especially employees, to 'subscribe' at home and at work, to the 'county office closure' topic. When a closure is called, as it has been twice recently due to weather, I publish a notice on our County web site and anyone who is subscribed automatically receives a notification of that closure.

It is important that you decide what you want to get, just the opposite of 'spam'! Again, we have 27 topics to choose from. I would also highly encourage everyone to subscribe to our 'Emergency Information Updates'. Emergency Manager Erik Nilsson in the Larimer County Sheriff's Department, does a great job of updating that page during fires, floods, severe weather, etc. He has also listed other resources at the Emergency Information page.

The other 25 topics are really varied from New Releases to Bids and Proposals to Jobs to Solid Waste Newsletters to Road Closures to Commissioner Meetings, Schedules, Minutes and more. You can see for yourself at: www.larimer.org/subscriptions.cfm.

Larimer County's Web Administrator, Steve Moore, continues to develop this page. He adds subscriptions when needed. If there is something you think lots of citizens would like to be notified about and you want to suggest adding it to the 'Subscription' page, please email me your suggestion at dlarue@larimer.org.

As of January 2, 2007, over 1200 people are subscribed to 'Emergency Information' notifications and over 500 people are subscribed to 'County Closure' notifications. Last week on Thursday, December 28, 2006, (that iffy snowstorm day), we had the most active day ever at the Virtual Courthouse with nearly 210,000 visitor hits!

We also offer our subscriptions via an 'RSS (either 'Rich Site Summary' or 'Really Simple Syndication') feed' if you'd prefer to get your updates via a newsreader instead of e-mail. By visiting www.larimer.org/subscriptions.cfm, you can get information on RSS feeds and the 'Enhanced Information' subscriptions we offer.