Elgin, Gail Borden library partner for newsletter initiative
Three years after the city of Elgin stopped printing a newsletter, residents are getting city news via the Gail Borden Public Library newsletter.
Starting with the January/February issue mailed out recently, the newsletter printed by the library district includes four extra pages of content paid for by the city. It will include seasonal information and news about events and city services, city spokeswoman Molly Center said. The current issue also has an introduction letter from Mayor David Kaptain.
The library district serves Elgin, most of South Elgin and portions of Streamwood, Bartlett and Hoffman Estates. About 46,000 newsletters are mailed to Elgin addresses and a little over 11,000 are mailed to addresses outside of Elgin; the latter will not be getting the larger, 16-page newsletter, library spokeswoman Denise Raleigh said.
Officials had estimated the city's cost would be $2,700 per issue for a total of $16,200 in 2019. The cost for the current issue was under budget at $2,544, Raleigh said. The library already has started receiving positive feedback from Elgin residents happy about the newsletter addition, she said.
"Although the library and the city are separate taxing bodies, we partner on many valuable projects," library Executive Director Carole Medal said.
The city stopped printing its newsletter - which cost $70,000 per year for five issues - in early 2016 due to staffing changes and budget considerations, Center said.
"When the Gail Borden Public Library reached out with this opportunity to collaborate and share space in their mailed newsletter, it provided the perfect balance of being able to send information by mail without the large price tag as we had in the past," she said.
The library also had looked for cost-savings in its newsletter, reducing it from 16 to 12 pages in July 2017, Raleigh said.
Center said that after the city's newsletter was stopped, "staff continued pushing out newsletter-like information on its modern communication channels - website, social media, mobile app, channel 17 and 311 - and planned to re-evaluate issuing a mailed newsletter following a communitywide survey."
The survey in summer 2017 showed the newsletter was among the communication methods preferred by residents. City staff members also looked at Facebook audience targeting and event-related postcards targeting specific neighborhoods as alternatives, Center said.