Tune up on the town website
Context Management System (CMS) websites have this poll feature as a plug-in modules. CMS will be part of a purposed enhancements made to the cable-committee next week. There will be a demo of Brookline-Town site using Drupal (CMS suite) next week.
CMS has huge advantages for town governments consisting of many departments. The first advantage is that it basically a "Database" of information built on SQL, second it is very secure (banks use this technique for online banking). And finally, it has a business-to-business easy access interface for each department to publish new information (polls, online forms, town forums, reports, documents, budgets,etc).
An example of a CMS is an online newspaper. The newspaper has categories (news, sports, business, etc) whereas the town has (schools, government, services, etc). These categories form the vocabulary or structure for the towns database.
Also, citizens that subscribe to the town site will be informed via email that new information has been updated, such as minutes, critical public announcements (like your taxes are going up) or more serious matters (ALERT: Child Abduction at Baseball Field). The information can also be sent to Facebook, twitter, myspace, etc, which is an option for subscribers.
Via a feature RSS, local newspaper, businesses, emergency agencies, can also subscribe to the town updates.
The other feature, which I know may have some interest to the taxpayers is that banner ad can be added that pull in revenue. Just like the recreation committee runs the concession stand and make a profit to cover expenses, so should the website. This is just an idea.
The selectmen will be soliciting bids this fall for the creation and technical support of a new town website that will use a content management system. Hopefully the new site will be up and running by town meeting in March
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Ann Somers commented
Could you date this message so that we know when "next week" is?
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Paul Doran commented
I'd like to suggest a way for citizens to interact with the BOS and possibly other departments in the town. We should look to leverage technology to update our means of conducting business. Many people are unable to attend BOS meetings due to work or family schedules but would like to participate. Maybe an on line form to submit issues and questions that the BOS could review and answer in an official capacity. There could be a way to incorporate an archive of recorded BOS meetings for those that cannot watch it live. While there may be some issues with videos replacing minutes due to process requirements, they certainly would be a very nice enhancement to minutes as the minutes leave out much of the detail of an actual recording.