How Towncrier works
Every notice on Towncrier is published by the municipality named on it: a member of that municipality’s own staff signed in and published it. Residents find it by search, on the town’s page, or as a notification if they follow the town.
Post, find, follow
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Town staff post a notice
From a phone, or from the portal on a computer.
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It goes up on the town’s page
Anyone can read it there, and it appears in Your feed for everyone who follows the town and has not muted its category.
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Followers get a notification
Notices are never sent overnight. Something published late in the evening reaches you the following morning, deliberately.
What every notice carries
- A category label and a title
- The municipality that published it, and when
- Meeting dates, hearing times and locations, when a notice has them, in your town’s own time zone
- The name and title of the staff member who published it
- Photos, when town staff attach them
- A way to share it, and Report this notice, which flags it for that town’s staff
If a notice is wrong, out of date, or missing, the municipality is the only one who can change it. Contact the clerk’s office directly.
The ten categories
Every notice sits in one of ten fixed categories. Residents mute the categories they do not care about and keep the ones they do.
- Meetings
- Public hearings
- Legal notices
- Roads
- Services
- Bids & RFPs
- Elections
- Events
- Announcements
- Jobs
There is deliberately no emergency category. Read the FAQ
For town staff
Staff accounts are issued by your own municipality; there is no public sign-up. If an account is switched off, an admin at your own municipality can switch it back on from the Staff page.
Post from a phone or a computer
Publish from the Town staff tab in the Towncrier app, or from the portal on a computer.
A tamper-evident record
Towncrier keeps a tamper-evident record of everything published.
Your name, not your email
Your name and title appear publicly under the notices you publish. Your email address does not.
A count, and never a list
You can see how many devices opened a notice. You cannot see which devices, who follows your town, or what any individual has read.
For residents
Board meetings, public hearings, road closures, bids, elections and legal notices — from the town that issued them.
Follow your town
Open Find a town, search by your town’s name, your ZIP code, or your county, and tap Follow. Its notices then show up in Your feed.
Mute what you do not need
In Settings, mute the categories you do not care about and keep the ones you do. Muting a category stops notices in it reaching you.
The full record
A town’s page keeps its full record, including notices that have already passed.
No account
You do not have an account. Towncrier never asks for your name, your email address or your phone number, and there is nowhere to type them. You do not sign up, and there is nothing to sign in to.
Get the app
Follow your town and Towncrier tells you when it posts something.
Tell us about your municipality
We talk it through, and you get a quote and an invoice. This goes to a person, not a queue.