Privacy Policy

Effective Date: August 27, 2026

This Privacy Policy explains how information is collected, used, and protected when you visit mybradfordcity.net.

This website is independently maintained by Mark Young, Bradford City Council Member, and is not an official website of the City of Bradford, Pennsylvania.

I believe residents should be able to learn about local government, share their opinions, and contact their elected officials without unnecessary collection or use of their personal information. I therefore try to limit the information collected through this website to what is reasonably necessary to operate the site, understand how it is being used, improve its usefulness, and communicate with visitors.

Information You Provide

Contact Form

If you use the website’s contact form, you may provide:

  • Your name

  • Your email address

  • The contents of your message

  • Any other information you voluntarily include in your message

This information is used to read and respond to your inquiry and, where appropriate, to follow up regarding the issue you contacted me about.

I do not sell contact-form information or use constituent correspondence to build advertising profiles.

Polls and Community Feedback

This website may contain polls, surveys, or other tools designed to gather feedback from Bradford residents.

Unless a poll or survey specifically states otherwise, these forms may not require your name or email address.

However, visitors should understand that the website’s normal analytics systems may still collect technical information when a poll or survey page is visited or submitted, including an IP address and approximate geographic information as described below.

Poll and survey responses are intended to be reviewed primarily in aggregate to better understand community opinions and priorities. I do not intentionally attempt to identify individual respondents based on their poll responses and website analytics information.

Please avoid including sensitive personal information in open-ended poll or survey responses unless it is necessary.

Website Analytics

I use website analytics to understand how people use this site, determine which information is useful to residents, identify technical problems, and verify the accuracy of website traffic reporting.

Local Analytics Verification

This website uses a locally operated Analytics Verification system within the website’s WordPress installation.

Depending on the type of interaction, this system may record information including:

  • The page visited

  • Links clicked on the website

  • The date and time of the interaction

  • The visitor’s Internet Protocol (IP) address

  • Approximate geographic information derived from the IP address

IP-based geographic information is approximate. It may identify a general city, region, state, or country associated with an internet connection, but it does not provide GPS location or a visitor’s exact physical address.

The IP information is collected primarily to help distinguish legitimate website activity, understand general geographic usage of the site, detect unusual or automated traffic, troubleshoot website activity, and compare locally recorded traffic with other analytics systems.

I do not use this information to determine the identity of ordinary website visitors, create personal profiles of constituents, or determine how a particular individual votes or feels about a political issue.

Google Analytics

This website also uses Google Analytics to measure website usage and traffic.

Google Analytics may collect information such as:

  • Pages viewed

  • Approximate geographic location

  • Browser and device information

  • Session and interaction information

  • Referring websites or traffic sources

  • Cookies or similar identifiers used to distinguish visits and sessions

Google states that Google Analytics may use an IP address during data collection to determine approximate geographic information. In Google Analytics 4, Google states that the IP address used for this purpose is discarded before the IP address itself is logged or stored in Analytics.

Google Analytics operates under Google’s own privacy practices and terms.

The locally operated Analytics Verification system described above is separate from Google Analytics and may retain an IP address even though Google Analytics does not make the visitor’s IP address available through its normal GA4 reporting interface.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

This website and services used by the website may use cookies or similar browser technologies.

These technologies may be used for purposes such as:

  • Website functionality

  • Security

  • Remembering website or browser settings

  • Measuring website traffic

  • Distinguishing visits or sessions

Google Analytics commonly uses first-party cookies, including identifiers used to distinguish visitors and sessions.

You can generally control or delete cookies through your browser settings. Blocking some cookies may affect certain website features.

How Analytics Information Is Used

Website analytics information may be used to:

  • Measure overall website traffic

  • Determine which pages and articles residents use

  • Understand how visitors navigate the website

  • Determine which links are being used

  • Identify technical problems

  • Detect spam, automated traffic, abuse, or security threats

  • Compare local traffic records with third-party analytics reports

  • Improve website design, accessibility, navigation, and content

  • Better understand whether information is reaching Bradford-area residents

Analytics information is not sold.

I do not use locally collected IP addresses for targeted advertising, voter profiling, political microtargeting, or commercial marketing.

Data Retention

I seek to retain identifiable technical information only for as long as it remains reasonably useful for website analytics, verification, security, or troubleshooting.

As a general practice, raw analytics records containing IP addresses should be retained for no longer than 12 months, unless there is a legitimate technical, security, legal, or record-retention reason to preserve particular information for a longer period.

Aggregated statistics that no longer reasonably identify an individual visitor may be retained for a longer period so that website usage can be compared over time.

Information submitted directly through correspondence may be retained for as long as reasonably necessary to address the matter or comply with applicable legal or record-retention obligations.

Constituent Communications and Public Records

Although this website is independently maintained and is not an official City of Bradford website, I am an elected member of Bradford City Council.

If you contact me regarding City government, City business, proposed legislation, a City department, a public project, constituent services, or another matter involving my official responsibilities, your communication may potentially constitute or become part of a governmental record under applicable Pennsylvania law.

The Pennsylvania Right-to-Know Law generally applies to records documenting a transaction or activity of a government agency. Whether a particular communication is subject to public disclosure depends on its content and applicable exemptions, privileges, and other laws.

Accordingly, I cannot promise that correspondence concerning official City business will always remain private or confidential.

Please do not send Social Security numbers, financial account information, medical records, passwords, or other highly sensitive personal information through the website unless specifically necessary and an appropriate secure method of communication has been arranged.

When Information May Be Shared

I may disclose information when reasonably necessary:

  • To operate, host, maintain, or secure the website

  • To service providers that provide website infrastructure, analytics, email, security, or technical services

  • To investigate spam, fraud, abuse, or security incidents

  • When required by law, subpoena, court order, or other lawful process

  • To comply with applicable public-record or governmental record-retention requirements

  • To protect the security or integrity of this website or its users

I do not sell website visitor information.

I do not provide the locally collected list of visitor IP addresses to political campaigns, advertisers, data brokers, or commercial mailing-list providers.

Third-Party Websites

This website contains links to websites operated by the City of Bradford, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, community organizations, news sources, businesses, social media platforms, and other third parties.

Once you leave this website, the privacy practices of the destination website apply. I am not responsible for the privacy or security practices of third-party websites.

Data Security

Reasonable administrative and technical measures are used to protect information maintained through this website from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction.

However, no website, server, email system, or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure.

Children’s Privacy

This website provides information about local government and community issues and is intended for a general audience. It is not designed specifically to collect personal information from children under the age of 13.

I do not knowingly solicit sensitive personal information from children through this website.

Your Choices and Questions About Your Information

If you have submitted information directly through this website and have questions about how it is being used or retained, you may contact me.

Where reasonably possible and legally permitted, you may also request that information you voluntarily submitted be corrected or deleted.

Some information may need to be retained where required by law, necessary for security purposes, or related to governmental records or official City business.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy may be updated when website functionality, analytics practices, legal requirements, or other data practices change.

When material changes are made, the effective date at the top of this policy will be updated.

Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy or the website’s data practices may be directed to:

Mark Young
Bradford City Council Member
Email: mark@mybradfordcity.net

Website: mybradfordcity.net

This website is independently maintained by Mark Young and is not the official website of the City of Bradford, Pennsylvania.