CivicReady

At the Annual Town Meeting on June 5, 2018, the Freetown voters voted to approve a phone/text notification system, to be used to notify residents of upcoming Town Meetings, elections, emergencies, etc. This system became FreetownFlash. The following year, at the Annual Town Meeting on June 3, 2019, the voters funded an improvement to the system, bringing the FreetownFlash system to the CivicPlus Platform. The FreetownFlash is now called CivicReady.

To sign up for CivicReady, simply fill out the form below. Messages sent out on CivicReady can be found below the sign up form. Finally, a FAQ can be found at the bottom of this page.

Please note: if you were signed up with the FreetownFlash system prior to September 2019, you may have been automatically carried over to the new CivicReady, CivicPlus system if you provided an email address. Please see the FAQ below for more information.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have a question that isn't answered here, please send an email to lfurtado@freetownma.gov

I was signed up under the old system – do I need to sign up again?

If you signed up previously and provided your e-mail address, you have been transferred over and you don’t have to do anything further. You may, however, want to log in and adjust some of your settings, as the system defaults to sending alerts by every method is has on each profile. If you did not provide your e-mail address, we could not transfer you over. You will need to re-enroll to continue to receive notifications.

How do I adjust my contact information or the settings you speak of?

If you provided your email address, select “Login Here” and you will be prompted to enter in your username and password. If this is your first time logging into the system, or if you just can’t remember your password, enter your email address and select “Reset Password”. You will receive an email with a reset link. Reset (or create) your password from there, and you will then be able to log in to CivicReady.

I tried to sign up, but it is telling me that my e-mail address is in use or that I’m already a member of this network. How do I sign up?

Good news! You are already signed up! See the question immediately before this one to reset or create your password, and you’ll be able to get into the system.

This is my first time signing up – what will I need to do?

Simply fill out your contact information above and follow the steps in the sign-up process. All the information in the “Personal Info” section is optional, but we ask everyone to fill out the whole profile to receive all notifications we intend to send out.
Very important: Make sure to leave “I allow Regroup to send me voice and text messages.” checked on your phone number(s) – if this is not checked off, we will not be able to contact you at all at that phone number!

Why am I getting alerts by both phone call and text message all of a sudden?

Unfortunately, this was the “side effect” of transferring everyone over from the old system to the new system. You can fix this by logging into the system and selecting “Notifications”. Here you can shut off text messages (“SMS”), phone calls (“Voice Alerts”) and e-mails. The “SMS Alerts” column is for a feature we are not utilizing, so you can ignore that one.

Why wasn't my contact information transferred over?

Because this is a log-in based system, we could not create accounts for contacts without an email address.

I signed up with my home phone – you won’t be texting my home phone, right?

The system should be smart enough to differentiate between landline numbers and cell phone numbers. If you think there may be an issue, you can follow the procedure in the previous question to double check and/or shut off text messages for that number.

I gave you my address when I signed up before – why is it not showing on my profile?

When we asked for addresses previously, we were attempting to limit sign-ups to one number per household, as the previous system had limits on the number of users. After all the sign-up slips were printed and included in the 2019 census, the decision was made to not limit sign-ups to one number per household, so the Selectmen’s office simply ignored this information on the sign-ups. Once those forms were entered into the system, they were destroyed. We apologize for this; if we knew a smarter system with better options was on the way, we certainly would have saved the addresses. 

Can I add multiple phone numbers or e-mails to my profile?

Certainly! This is an unlimited system.

What is different about this system?

This system is an unlimited system. The Town was limited to the number of alerts we could send out, based on the number of people that signed up. Those limits are no longer present. Additionally, there are a number of different options that the other system did not offer, such as geolocated alerts (which we will be rolling out in 2020!), personal profiles, self-serve sign-ups and more.

Geolocated alerts? What do you mean?

This new system puts users who provide their addresses on the map – literally. A new option allows the Selectmen’s office to basically draw on a map and send out alerts to only those users within the drawn area. Imagine a world where we can send out a reminder the night before to residents effected by a scheduled curbside trash & recycling delays, but leave all the other residents in town alone… if you put update your profile and add your address, we’ll be able to do exactly that! Since we are starting with no addresses in our system, we hope to start utilizing this system by the end of the year.

How can I unsubscribe?

Simply enter your e-mail address next to the unsubscribe button, above, and hit unsubscribe. The system will send you a link to confirm that you wanted to unsubscribe – click the link and you are all set!