Several changes have taken place over the past few weeks on the Sylvan Lake News’ website.
Now amalgamated into a format similar to other Black Press newspapers, the website is home to all the stories which appear every week in our printed edition.
We’re still working out some bugs, but the website and other initiatives underway will continue the evolution of the Sylvan Lake News as your hyperlocal source of news about people and events in the Sylvan Lake area.
Take a look, for instance at our web poll. Here are the results from the last two weeks.
On the question for the week ending June 28, “Should the town and summer villages pay the cost to dredge the lake’s outlet creek to lower the lake water level?” the 106 people who voted were 70 per cent in favour.
The following week, the question was “Do you support the town’s annual expenditure for fireworks displays four times a year?” Again those voting were overwhelmingly in favour with 35 votes (81 per cent) for and 8 against.
The current week’s question was “Are you supportive of the stance taken by Sylvan Lake councillors to require developers to protect mature tree stand when new subdivisions are created?” At press time the polling was 94 per cent in favour.
Participation in the new poll has been rather low but we anticipate as people explore the new features on the site, voting will increase significantly.
Another new feature is an interactive calendar on which non-profit organizations can enter their coming events. Check it out and post your events. Eventually this will be a Sylvan Lake-Eckville based calendar but for now it’s linked to our sister paper, the Red Deer Advocate, and provides a region wide list.
Like us on Facebook. We’ve entered the age of social media and will be using it in more ways to keep people informed on an emergent basis which adds value to our printed edition. In the near future we plan to post interesting and current information through Facebook and will be exploring other opportunities to keep our readers informed.
Take a few minutes to check us out on the net and send us your suggestions for improvements.