HomeMy WebLinkAbout2.a. ePackets for Council meetingsAGENDA ITEM: ePackets for Council meetings
AGENDA SECTION:
I V/SKS Ion
PREPARED BY: Alan Cox, Communications Coordinator
AGENDA NO. 24
ATTACHMENTS:
APPROVED BY:
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Discussion and guidance
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CITY COUNCIL
City Council Work Session: December 13, 2006
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As an experiment this fall the City Council has received packets for its regular meetings compiled
electronically. Staff would like to hear views from Council members on the experiment, share internal
feedback, and receive guidance about whether to make the investment required to create "ePackets" in the
future
Expense for permanent ePackets
How the experiment was conducted
The last five regular meeting packets have been created as computer files in PDF format. Departments
provided content m the form of smaller files, mostly Microsoft Word documents. Some material was
provided as PDF files that were scanned from paper or created by clencal staff using free programs
To prevent the ePacket PDF from becoming too large to load on screen and use, keeping the files
compressed is critical. The free programs do not do a good job of compression. The free choices also do
not easily allow multiple files to be combmed. The best program for those purposes is Adobe Acrobat,
and the City's only copy is used by the Communications Coordinator to post documents to the City
website During the term of the experiment, department clerical staff sent the documents to the
Coordinator, who created the master PDF document for each meeting and posted it to the City's Intranet.
The City Clerk (or, during the run -up to the election, other clerical staff) printed out the PDF for
distribution on paper.
Before each meeting a different Council member was given a laptop computer with the PDF preloaded.
Other Council members were given paper copies. Additional paper versions were prepared as reference
copies available in Council chambers for the public and reporters. Midway through the experiment,
internal users of the Council packet stopped receiving the normal paper copies and were instructed to
download the PDF from the Intranet and print only what they believed they needed.
To create the ePackets on an ongoing basis, additional copies of Adobe Acrobat would be needed for the
City Clerk to create the ePackets on her own, and for the Planning /Personnel Secretary to serve as backup.
It would enhance efficiency if another three or four clencal employees could have copies of the software
to handle the preparation and collating of each department's individual agenda items. The program lists
for $300.
The laptop that Council members used during the experiment was purchased for this purpose at a cost of
roughly $1,300. Four more laptops would be needed to serve the entire Council. The laptops would
presumably have other uses for Council members' official duties.
Council reaction
The opinions of the Council will be solicited at the work session, but informal reaction of Council
members to the experiment seemed to be positive. Two members said they received the laptop late
because it could not be delivered when their homes were unattended. This would not be a permanent
problem because Council members would keep their assigned laptops and the packet would be delivered
on CD or a "memory stick" that could be left outside homes unattended.
One member said parts of the packet should be printed out for ease of use. Two members asked that a
few pages, such as the agenda and calendar, be supplied on paper along with the file
Staff comments
Department heads indicated that they are comnutted to making the ePacket system work if the Council
wants to use it. During a discussion of the experiment, several observations were made.
Because of the packets' length, computer users may be subject to eye fatigue. If Council members
feel they must pant paper copies at home, they are incurring a personal expense that seems unfair.
If Council members request substantial amounts of the packet to be printed by staff, there are
issues of expense and coordination that may undercut the benefits of going to ePackets.
With the exception of the City Administrator, staff will not have access to the ePackets during
meetings. Department heads will have to print to paper a substantial amount of each packet so
they ate prepared to respond to Council questions.
Because of the need to print out the ePackets as a single document, it is not feasible to use colored
sheets as item dividers. The new format does permit the easy addition of page numbers. Staff
disagreed about whether this tradeoff was a net positive or negative.
Because most of the items that make up the ePacket were originally created in Word, the
documents can be searched by phrases or words Some documents, such as letters from outside
sources, had to be scanned and cannot be searched this way. Software that would make those
documents searchable is more expensive.
The ePacket format could permit posting of the materials to the City's website to enhance
communications with the public, although there may be small additional costs to handle the
storage of the files on the webserver.
During the experiment some internal processing issues were left unresolved, such as including on
the first page of agenda items the item number and the City Administrator's approval. These
issues would need to be resolved as experience is gained with the new format.
I.T. support will not be readily available during the weekends or during evening meetings in case
problems develop with a Council member's laptop.
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Council members will need to plug in their laptops to electrical current during meetings to avoid
dead batteries. Electrical work may be required to make that more convenient, especially for work
sessions.
Because of the timing of meetings, it would probably make sense to move the Port Authority to
ePackets whose files could be distributed to Council members at the same time as ePackets for the
Council regular meetings The three Port commissioners who are not on the Council would
receive paper copies. ePackets would not be prepared for the other advisory commissions.
Provision of laptops to all Council members would make it attractive to provide wireless
connections for them in the Council chambers. A later step might be to provide a system to allow
the Council to receive the ePacket and other documents online, such as an mtranet for the Council,
although such a system would be difficult to use for members with a dial -up Internet connection
and would be bound by data practices and open meeting requirements.
Other cities that have implemented ePackets use software customized for the purpose that offer
features beyond what has been attempted here. Whether those features outweigh the higher costs
may be a topic for exploration during the City's technology review next year.
Implementation
If the Council approves purchase of additional laptops and software licenses, ePackets could be produced
before the winter is complete.
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