Warminster Agrees to Join Pilot Text Alert Program

The Warminster supervisors at the July 19 board meeting gave the green light to police chief Michael Murphy and township manager Rich Manfredi to enroll the township with emergency alert provider Nixle.com. The agreement will have Warminster joining a pilot alert program with the other communities in the Centennial School District, Ivyland and Upper Southampton. 

"This is a really exciting opportunity to provide important information to our residents," said Chief Murphy. "It is a robust application that will allow us to send messages to the public about any law enforcement activity and other township notifications, such as upcoming special events."

Nixle.com was formed in 2007 as a mass communication service designed to help law enforcement and emergency management services inform the public of any immediate dangers or situations. Users that wish to subscribe to the service can text their zip code to 888777 or register online.

Normally, the alerts for emergency management are completely free to law enforcement agencies. If a municipality wants to send a message about non-emergency issues, such as sending a reminder that recycling will not be picked up on a holiday, then they will have to pay a fee.

However, Nixle's experiment on providing text and e-mail alerts for all of the communities within the school district means that there will be no charge for any communications to Warminster, Ivyland, Upper Southampton or Centennial.

"We want to achieve complete community integration," said Nixle.com spokesman Jim Gatta. "The pilot program will show us how to break down those walls between the townships and the school district and help everybody share resources."

For example, if there is a school lockdown at , the administration would be able to use Nixle to alert the parents, but can also notify the Warminster Police Department, which can then send a targeted message to the surrounding neighborhoods that may contain residents who are not in the school district database.

"I live right near Tennent," said Gatta. "My kids aren't in high school yet, but if there is a situation, I may need to know what is going on."

Gatta plans to have the system in place by the end of August, before the start of the school year. Nixle will use any feedback from the users to modify and perfect the system before rolling it out into wider communities.

Nixle provides services to nearby municipalities, including Upper Moreland, Hatboro and Lower Merion, but the Centennial townships would be among the company's first clients in Bucks County.

A notification system has been created for the county by ReadyNotifyPA, but those messages are primarily used for larger, regional alerts. The Nixle program will give Warminster more control on the frequency and content of the messages. 

"We have clients throughout the country, but I hope that this program in my hometown becomes a success story for the company," said Gatta.