City of White Salmon's new Meeting Portal includes online council attendance and voting records for the public.

#1

Kudos to ClerkOn member Leana and her colleagues at White Salmon for leading the way in transparency by implementing a new Meeting Portal for the public which showcases council attendance and voting records, meeting agendas and minutes, and e-update notifications to name a few.


Leana says: "The ability to easily record and access the attendance and voting records of our council is a great help, I highly recommend it!"


Checkout Leana's Meeting Portal at https://white-salmon.civicweb.net/portal/. If you have questions about the Portal, please post a reply below and a response will be posted shortly.

#2

The portal is a great asset. I have been wanting to try and do this for our County Board. I think the citizens would be impressed with the use of technology!

#3

ClerkOn member Leana way to go in using Technology to keep the transparency of the local government.

#4

Sounds like a great program and process for you.

#5

How long did it take you to sell your council on this portal?

#6

I first worked with key staff members, such as the Police Chief and City Administrator, and had them sit in on a demonstration so they could see how it can be used. With their support, presenting the idea to my council was farily straight forward. I emphasized the improved ability to manage meetings, the ability to track actions from those meetings and improved transparency with the public. We were also able to implement it with no impact to the overall budget. In the end, I made it easy for council to approve the decision-improved city processes and transparency while having no impact to the overall budget.

#7

I lovethe portal. I am comparing to our website, to see if we need a change.

#8

what about council members that are not internet savvy? Have you encountered this? How do they feel about it?

#9

Did you use a marketing campaign when you launched the portal? What kind of feedback have gotten from the community on the portal?

#10

When I post the agenda, council packet or minutes, the council and any other list subscribers recieve an e-mail notification with a link to what was posted. It makes it very easy for those that are not internet savvy since they only need to click on a link vs navigating through the page. I still print some paper copies of the packet for them to use.


In the future, budget dependent, I hope to have tablets for the council members and move to a completely paperless process. In talking with another jurisdiction, when they changed to paperless, they set up individual training sessions for each person and tailored the learning to that individual. In the end it eased the transition and reduced the frustration for those that are not as comfortable with technology.


Overall the feedback from council has been positive.

#11

We have not done any marketing campaigns for the new portal. We also haven't received much feedback from the community, but what we have recieved has been positive.

#12

What kind of budget costs did it take to implement this portal? Looks great, but in small towns its cost, cost, cost

#13

We have a population of 2,400 and a tight budget as well. We were able to purchase the iCompass meeting and Records Management tool, which included the portal, within our budget constraints.

#14

Love the look and the information is so detailed. Do you have a specific web manager to upload the information?

#15

The uploading is all done by city staff within their current roles. The iCompass platform is very easy to use from a management perspective as well as a user perspective.

#16

This is a great asset and tool.

#17

Wish we could implement this technology, but being a small community, those that want to know will either come to city hall and ask or will go to our website and read the minutes.

#18

Sounds like a great program and process for you.

#19

way to go!

#20

I love it!