NILES — The City of Niles has upgraded its text messaging system with the aim to better serve the residents. The new system has many advanced features and more readily accommodates the growing list of residents, regular visitors and others who opted in to the service in order to receive information from the city of Niles. With the prevalence of cell phone use today, text messaging allows the city to send a message to hundreds or thousands of people within seconds.

The texting system was initiated so that residents could be updated more quickly about situations taking place in Niles. It is used to inform citizens of not only activities and events, but also road closures, water or sewer line breaks as well as other electric, water or wastewater processes in the city. It is instrumental in quickly informing the community of public safety issues and utility outages and estimated times when services will resume. Most importantly, there was a need to have a way to get information out immediately to as many residents as possible during major emergencies. The texting system is part of the City of Niles Emergency Operation Plan. Text messaging proved invaluable during the recent flooding and last year’s tornado that caused extensive damage in one area of the city.

There are actually two text message lists for residents to choose. Residents can sign up for both lists. The NILESCITY list provides information on public safety issues, such as leaf and brush pickups, street closures, utility operations, etc. The NILESFUN list allows residents to sign up to receive fun, educational and exciting activities and events taking place in the city. Regardless of which list people sign up for, all those who opt-in to the service will receive Major Emergency Alerts when required. Major Emergency Alerts are situations that significantly impact the public safety of the community — as the past floodwaters and tornado did previously.

Those interested in signing up for Public Safety, Public Works and Utility Updates can text  555888 and in the message line type NILESCITY.  Those interested in signing up to receive text messages about fun activities and events can text 555888 and type NILESFUN in the message line. Data Rates and Fees May Apply. Both lists will automatically enroll people to receive Major Emergency Alerts.

City Administrator Ric Huff encouraged all city residents to sign up to receive text messages from the city. 

“Our goal with this system is to eventually have most of the residential households signed up. We’ve found that there is a surge in people opting into the service after a significant event. In some cases one neighbor asks another.”