From road closures to trash delays and water interruptions, service disruptions are an unavoidable part of running a city — and a time when residents need to be well-informed. City officials have learned that clear, timely and coordinated communication is essential to maintaining public trust.
In Myrtle Beach, large-scale events provide one of the clearest tests of a city’s communication strategy. The Carolina Country Music Festival, which brings tens of thousands of visitors downtown, requires extensive coordination around road closures, security, staging and post-event cleanup. In recent years, the city shifted from handling numerous one-off media interviews to hosting a single, comprehensive press conference on festival grounds ahead of the event.
“This is a ‘one-stop-shop’ to make it easier for the media to get all of the answers to any question they have in one place and use it for stories throughout the week,” said Meredith Denari, director of communications and creative services for the City of Myrtle Beach. “By doing so, we also save valuable staff time. There are no ‘exclusives’ on CCMF stories, so it’s a win-win for all involved.”
Unexpected incidents demand a different, faster approach. In another case, when a sewage pipe ruptured during construction on a private site, the city relied on rapid responsiveness and clear messaging. It emailed news releases and shared those messages across social media platforms to ensure broad reach. It also used radio to reach residents who may not be online, reinforcing key messages and helping to counter speculation.
Routine but disruptive changes, such as holiday-related trash and yard debris schedule shifts, require repetition across multiple channels. Myrtle Beach communicates these changes through its city newsletter, social media, local news outlets and neighborhood watch groups. These layered efforts recognize that residents consume information differently and that no single channel reaches everyone. While the feedback often includes questions from residents who missed the initial notice, overall response improves when the same message appears in multiple trusted places.
Water service disruptions are handled with particular care to avoid unnecessary alarm. For localized outages, Myrtle Beach Public Works staff place door hang tags on affected homes and businesses when work begins and again when service is restored.
“This is more effective unless a large area is included, because we do not want to worry residents unnecessarily or start the rumor mill,” Denari said.
For larger service areas, broader communication methods are used, but the guiding principle remains the same: inform clearly without causing undue concern.
In Hartsville, proactive, multichannel communication has become a core strategy for managing information about service disruptions.
Michelle Byers Brown, Hartsville's director of tourism, communications and Main Street Hartsville, describes a communications environment that has changed dramatically in just a few years. Residents now expect information immediately, and in formats that are easy to find and understand.
To meet that demand, the city has narrowed its focus on a few highly effective channels while remaining flexible enough to reach different audiences.
“With our demographic, we found that we were having more Facebook users as active users for the timely information — especially the unexpected. We found that by using the tools that Facebook has now incorporated, such as local alerts, has helped us a great deal,” Byers Brown said. “It's timely, it captures a great deal of our population and it's fantastically free.”
With roughly 15,000 followers in a city of about 7,500 residents, the city’s official Facebook page often reaches well beyond its immediate audience through shares and community groups. Byers Brown uses the platform to share information on road closures, holiday trash schedules, weather-related updates and even advance notice of events like Duke Energy siren testing at the nearby Robinson Nuclear Plant — posts that prevent confusion and unnecessary calls to city offices.
Hartsville keeps its city Facebook page strictly focused on official city business, reinforcing the idea that if something appears there, it matters to large numbers of people. Facebook posts routinely link back to the city’s website, where residents can find more details without having to scroll through feeds.
For two-way communication, Hartsville has adopted SeeClickFix, a mobile-friendly platform that lets residents report non-emergency issues such as potholes or water concerns. Reports are automatically routed to the appropriate department and residents receive confirmation and status updates as issues are addressed. This transparency reassures residents that their concerns are heard and acted upon, while also reducing the burden on phone lines.
For the most critical situations, such as water outages, the city uses targeted robocalls tied to utility accounts. These calls are reserved for significant disruptions, ensuring they retain their impact and are not ignored.
Sometimes going “old school,” like phone calls and door hangers, can be the most effective communication tool in an outage.
“People are growing tired of too much information coming across electronically, so we still have to use all the tools. That may be an old-fashioned newsletter, that may be a door hanger, that may be a real letter in the mail,” said Debbie Szpanka, director of communications and community outreach for Bluffton. “If it’s a disruption that’s only going to affect a couple of streets, go to them directly with that information.”
For large-scale disruptions — such as weather events, flooding or widespread service delays — the town uses a full range of communication tools, from social media and websites to email alerts and news media.
Szpanka says she always tries to keep her audience in mind when trying to find the best way to communicate.
“You don’t look at the problem, you look at the people you’re trying to reach,” she said. “Everyone has their own personal preferences on how they receive information. It is our duty to bring the water to the horse in ways that they can drink it.”
Managing expectations is just as important as sharing information. Much of the frustration local governments encounter stems from confusion about who provides which services and what authority a town has. In Bluffton’s case, for example, the town does not control water, the fire services or many major roads — facts that are not always obvious to new residents, especially those arriving from other states with different government structures.
To address this knowledge gap, the town invested in a comprehensive Bluffton Resident Resource Guide mailed to every household. The 24-page publication explains how local government works, who to contact for specific issues and which services are — or sometimes more importantly, are not — provided by the town. Szpanka described it as a baseline educational effort designed to reduce misunderstandings before they turn into complaints.
The town reinforces this information through “mobile town halls,” bringing presentations directly to neighborhoods, civic groups and homeowners associations. These sessions often begin with skepticism or frustration, but Szpanka says the tone almost always shifts once residents feel informed and heard.
“When people understand, that anger and frustration just evaporate,” she says.
That education helps turn residents into ambassadors and they are often the ones providing accurate information to questions posed on social media.
“It became a force multiplier in terms of education about how we operate,” she says. “When we have neighbors helping other neighbors on social media, that to me is a huge success.”
Sometimes, Szpanka said, the best communication strategy is to listen.
“When people are confused or they don't have adequate information, they're going to get angry and they're going to get frustrated,” she says. “So, you treat your public relationships like your private relationships. If people are frustrated, take some time, look them in the eye and figure out why they're frustrated. Half the time, they don’t even expect you to fix it, they just want you to listen.”