Medically Advanced Loma Linda Is Still Social Media Novice

Loma Linda Mayor Rhodes Rigsby is looking for a few good friends. More specifically, a few good Facebook friends.

Rigsby is a part of a growing number of city officials who have joined the world of social media, creating a Facebook page that he has welcomed constituents to use as a way to contact him. He just hasn’t received any yet, he said.

“As far as Facebook goes, nobody has ever contacted me on Facebook, not even once,” he said. “I freely list that I’m the mayor of Loma Linda.”

Oddly enough, this city, known as a leader for its medical breakthroughs, has yet to connect with its residents through Facebook. The city does not have one, and Rigsby's page is a personal page.

What Rigsby does get is his share of some unusual friend requests.

“This is really just funny, I get scantily clad ladies asking me to be their friends on Facebook,” he said. “I don’t know who they are. I’ve never heard of them. I’ve never met them.”

He declines their requests.

“OK, the mayor does not need to have scantily clad women as friends on Facebook,” he said.

Many residents do reach out to Rigsby when they run into him around town, or by calling or e-mailing him.

“I hear lots of questions about whether or not Fresh & Easy is going to open,” he said. “People tell me about potholes, and tell me about streetlights that are not working. I never once had anybody ask, ‘When are you going to get a Facebook page?’ ”

Rigsby isn’t a fan of the social networking site, and says he “can’t figure out what’s so exciting.”

“I see people who are addicted to some of the games on Facebook, and it’s kind of pathetic,” he said. “Maybe I’m just too old.”

The city of Loma Linda does have its own Twitter account, which currently has 155 followers.

“We would like to do more [with social media],” said Konrad Bolowich, director of information systems for the city of Loma Linda. “But with what we have it takes a little effort to keep up and stay current.”

The goal of the city’s Twitter feed is to inform Loma Linda residents on the latest happenings around town.

“What we are using Twitter for is emergency notification and street closures and water shut offs, those kinds of things,” Bolowich said. “So if there’s water main that was shut off to a neighborhood or we have a street closed, we’ll tweet those and that way people know what’s happening.”

The Twitter account is also being used to publicize events in the area.

“If a group asks for it, we’ll put it out for them,” said Bolowich. “We did it for Little League baseball signups. We did it for the PossAbilities Walk. We’re very supportive of community events and we will put out a Tweet.”

Neighboring Redlands has a larger Twitter presence, with almost 1,000 followers according to Carl Baker, public information officer for the city of Redlands

"It’s another communication tool," he said. "People receive information in different ways, and unfortunately not everyone reads the newspaper. I can’t tell you how often I’ve had people say, ‘Well, you should have told us about this,’ and it was something that there were big articles in the paper about. We do in every way we could possible."

According to Baker, the city's official Facebook pages are hits, "especially with the police department’s Facebook page," he said. "That one seems to be really well used."

When he started the Facebook page, he couldn't find many other communities with a social media presence. 

"I was looking for other cities as examples and I couldn’t find any," he said. "There are some on there now. But at the time that I did it I couldn’t find any to use as a model, so we just plowed ahead. We learned as we did it. We’ve had to make adjustments and will always have to make adjustments."

Because Baker can't constantly be on Facebook, the city contracts with a local woman to keep the account updated.  Most of the public's interest in the police Facebook page stems from residents wanting to know about police activity in their neighborhood.

"A lot of what was missing for us [as a department] was that vehicle to receive communication back from the public," Baker said. "Usually that happens with the police page."

Currently, there are no plans for the city of Loma Linda to have its own Facebook page.

“Nobody’s come up and requested that that I know of,” Bolowich said. “It’s not a bad idea. There are a lot of different methods to keep people informed. A lot goes on in the city. It’s hard to keep everybody up on a lot of the good things that we’re doing out there.”

That might change if the city gets more staffers.

“It really becomes an issue of we really don’t want to start something that we can’t support,” Bolowich said. “And we just don’t have the staffing to be doing things that take time away from paving roads and catching criminals and those types of things.”