New page features information about recycling, energy efficiency and City parks
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Continuing its plunge into the social media realm, the City of Somerville has created a Green Somerville page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/GreenSomerville. It will provide a forum for community members to stay current on the City’s environmental initiatives and to provide feedback to the City about those programs.

Specific areas of focus on the page will include recycling, green energy, energy efficiency, carbon footprint reduction, municipal parks and tree plantings.

“For a lot of people in the city, this is a priority topic,” said Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone. “The Green Somerville Facebook page will allow them to follow all of our green programs in one place instead of hunt around for snippets of information here and there.”

Curtatone also expects Somerville residents will come to the page to suggest their ideas on how the City can become more environmentally conscious.

“One of the great things about social media is it provides two-way communication,” he said. “City government does not have a monopoly on good ideas. We need to hear from people who are interested in the programs we run. More citizen engagement will help us shape better policies.”

David Lutes, director of the City’s Office of Sustainability and the Environment, believes the page will serve an important community outreach function, especially on the topic of recycling.

“Since we started our single-stream recycling test program last fall, I have had people constantly asking me when the program will be coming to other neighborhoods and how the program works,” he said. “The Green Somerville page will give people a single point of reference to get all of that information as well as the opportunity to let us know how the program is working.”

Other Somerville pages include:

• City of Somerville (official)
• 311Somerville
• SomervillePublicSchools
• SomerVision (comprehensive plan)
• SomervilleArts
• Somerville-Cares-About-Prevention
• Somerville Recreation

The City’s social media goal is to allow the people of Somerville to more readily access their areas of interest in local government. More Facebook pages and Twitter feeds will be coming online at http://www.somervillema.gov/departments/communications/social-media, in addition to the City YouTube channel and the ResiStat blog.