[RP TownTalk] Talking to the Town: Two Proposals

[Vernon Archer]

I'd like to weigh in on the discussion regarding this mail list, posting
minutes and uses of the website. Please consider the following points in
your discussion about getting more info out to the "connected:"

1. The Town Talk mail list was created (by executive order) to give
residents a place to converse about matters of common interest related to
the civic life of the town. It was never intended as a place for town
officials to report to the subset of the residents who subscribe to this
list. It seems to me that this list has worked reasonably well, in part
because a number of you have taken up the roll of news reporter for your
fellow Talkers.

2.The "Town Announce" list was created to inform residents about
meetings/activities that pertain to the civic life of our town (it has a
significantly larger subscription than Town Talk).  We try to get agenda
items listed for meetings so you can know what is going on.  This is
intended to facilitate attendance/participation.

3.Minutes are no longer created by Danielle Glaros in the meeting itself,
but instead by code enforcement Officer Colleen Ferguson using the tape of
the Legislative meeting. They are rarely  prepared much in advance of the
following Legislative meeting.  This situation will hopefully improve when
we hire our third administrative assistant, but there are a number of
competing priorities that we wish to address with this increase in staff.

4.Unadopted minutes are not currently released to the public until the night
they are to be acted upon, so unless there is a major change of heart by the
council there will be no minutes released until they are approved at the
following meeting.  I support the current practice of not releasing minutes
until they are reviewed and approved by council.

5. Full copies of the minutes of all legislative meetings were posted to our
website from 2000 until October 2002. I am going to direct that this
practice be resumed, and that an effort be made to fill in the missing years
as soon a reasonably possible. The same is true for the Town Crier.

6. The rebirth of our website is long overdue and this must be corrected
ASAP.  I asked Town Administrator Pat Prangley to work with Alan Thompson to
prepare an RFP. Discussion of this will likely take place at the January
30th work session.

7. One feature I hope to have on the new website is the capacity for
streaming video, so that we can post at least the most current Council
meeting on the web site for all of you to view at your convenience. If we
can do this, I can see no reason why video rebroadcast should take more than
a couple of days to post. We will post the agenda also to assist viewers in
following the proceedings.

 It has always been a significant goal of my administration to
facilitate better information flow to residents about what is happening in
our town.  I always fully utilize the space in the Town Crier that is
allotted for the mayor's report to both inform the public about longer term
goals/vision and how we at Town Hall are expending our energy on the day to
day issues of government. I also take my reports to the Town Council very
seriously. However, my urge to inform residents is tempered by a variety of
concerns, including: competing priorities; not wanting to dampen the input
of persons who don't want to contradict the mayor; wanting to avoid being
drawn into inane debate; and wanting to be certain that what I say is true
and will stand up in the long run.

Best wishes,

Vern


On 1/18/06, Alan Thompson & Sarah Wayland <twacks at his.com > wrote:
>
> While I agree with David Lingua that 48 hours is a bit tight, I think
> David Hiles' proposal to make minutes (including draft minutes)
> available is good.  I think it would be better to post them to the web
> site (which, wearing my webmaster hat, I'm ready to do with <48 hour
> turnaround, assuming I have a network connection) than to send them as
> email attachments.
>
> I even think it would be a good idea to post any old minutes that are
> still available as well.  I don't know that I would go to the trouble
> of scanning in old paper ones, but if the Word/WordPerfect files are
> available for the last year or two I would love to get that information
> up and available.
>
> Alan
>
>
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