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Mass Innovations, From The Beacon, June 2011
A website set up last fall to help local officials in Barre comply with new open meeting law regulations is now assisting other communities as well.
The website, www.mytowngovernment.org, was developed by Joshua Smith, a Barre Zoning Board of Appeals member and co-founder of the Maynard-based technology company Kaon Interactive. Working for free, Smith created a site that makes it easier for the Barre town clerk to comply with new requirements – including the posting of meeting agendas, not just meeting notices, at least 48 hours ahead of time.
Once the website proved workable for Barre, Smith invited other communities to set up sites for themselves. On the My Town Government homepage is a link for “Anytown, USA,” which offers a tutorial for creating a local site. By this spring, Hardwick, Athol and Orange also were making use of the service.
On the Hardwick site, during the week beginning May 9, more than a dozen meetings and agendas were posted for the next several days, including a notice for a Quabbin Regional School District School Committee meeting. Because Barre is also a member of the regional school district, any district document posted on the Barre site also appears on the Hardwick site, and vice versa. The same is true of notices posted by other regional entities, such as the Central Massachusetts Regional Planning Commission.
Smith, who describes himself as a champion of transparency in government, said he would like to see as many communities as possible take advantage of the site. There is no cost for the service; Barre and the other towns are using only a tiny fraction of the free storage space that Google, which hosts the site, allots.
That could change, however, if enough communities sign up and use the site not just for posting meeting agendas but also for archiving minutes and other documents. Smith said that if My Town Government runs out of free storage space, he will ask towns to contribute $99 a year to help cover costs.
Ellen Glidden, the Barre town clerk, said she began talking with Smith last spring, when he had proposed at Town Meeting that the minutes for all town boards and committees be posted online – a task that Glidden described at the time as impractical due to limited staffing and an antiquated office computer.
A few months later, when new open meeting law regulations were issued, “We were scrambling like everyone else, trying to figure out, ‘How are we going to comply with this?’” Glidden recalled.
Previously, Glidden had posted meeting notices on a town hall bulletin board, but the new regulations required that the notices and agendas be accessible to the public 24 hours a day. Barre proposed My Town Government as its method of complying with the law, and the attorney general’s office approved its use. (Smith took additional steps to make the information more widely available, including converting an old laptop to an electronic kiosk that allows Town Hall visitors to view meetings and agendas at any time the building is open, and making information available via phone and the town’s cable-access programming.)
What is most valuable about the online system, according to Glidden, is that the chairs of boards and committees are able to post their own notices and agendas. In addition to reducing work for the town clerk’s office, she said the system gives boards and committee more control over what appears on their agendas. If an agenda item is added after the agenda is posted, the board or committee chair can log in and add it.
“It also addresses the winter weather,” Glidden added. “This being New England, if they need to cancel a meeting, they can do it from their homes. They can post from anywhere.”
Board and committee chairs are instantly notified if they are violating the requirement that postings must be done at least 48 hours in advance. Until last year, only Sundays weren’t counted as part of the 48-hour period, but the new regulations also exempt Saturdays. This means that a meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. on a Monday must be posted by 7 p.m. the previous Thursday.
For more information, contact Joshua Smith at (617) 512-5477.