By Wayne E. Rivet

Staff Writer

HARRISON — Wendy Gallant feels one way to beat social media negativity is to get out in front of it.

Gallant, owner of Miss Maple’s Nature House (a nature-based enrichment program for youth) in Harrison, encouraged the Harrison Select Board at its last meeting during public participation to take a more proactive approach on Facebook, either by posting information regarding upcoming meetings or programs, or by providing accurate responses to questions posed by the public via social media.

“As you all know, social media kind of takes over our lives sometimes more often than a negative, unfortunately. The Town of Harrison has two social media sites and we all know what’s happening out there. It bothers me a lot that such negativity is out there and it seems to get in the way of us just wanting to share regular municipal business without having to have an influx of commentary and negativity,” she said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have a very active social media site for the Town of Harrison. I know that we have one, but it’s not very active. It’s really not maintained well. It’s not kept up. I feel like we should get out in front of news rather than always putting out fires.”

Gallant told town officials that other municipalities in Maine have improved their social media presence, and have seen good results.

“They do a fabulous job of getting information out that we’re having a Select Board meeting, that we’re having a Planning Board meeting, that the Boy Scouts are downtown. They always get ahead of it and you can turn off commenting just to share the information,” she added. “I feel like there are residents and citizens that kind of get upset because they didn’t know that. We hear that a lot. I think we could do a little better about being more transparent and getting our information out so that people do know what’s happening. In this day and age, people are on social media, Facebook in particular, and I think that that’s where we need to meet them. I would like to see us do a better job about that.”

Gallant said the page could be overseen by town administration, as other municipalities have done. Gallant also offered to serve as a volunteer.

“I just think it would help us to be a little more upfront about things and get our information out before people start filling in the blanks with what they don’t know,” she said.

Board Chairman Matt Frank, at a previous meeting, addressed the “negativity” he had seen on social media and asked the public to bring their questions, concerns and comments to town officials to gain accurate information and responses.

“I think those are very good recommendations. The Friends of Harrison and Residents of Harrison websites are not from the Town of Harrison. They’re private, so we have no control over them and that has caused us a great deal of problems. As you know, I spoke at length about this issue at the last Select Board meeting and asked the people who had issues to stop trashing people on social media and to call us to make an appointment to see Cass (Newell, the town manager) or me or Phil (Devlin, board vice chairman) or the department heads. I have to report that we got not a single phone call,” Frank said. “So, they’re very happy to trash us when it’s anonymous on social media rather than come and constructively discuss whatever their issues are (with us). It seems to me that when I was a child, my mother told me if you don’t have something nice to say about someone, don’t say anything at all. I think that would be good.”