It’s user-friendly and should provide more transparency
By Barb Pert Templeton
At the April 4 meeting of the Marine City Commission officials were walked through how to utilize several new pages on the city website.
City Clerk Jason Bell gave a presentation to the commission about the new Granicus software for local government. He began by stating he had several updates about the meeting minutes and agendas, noting that those items are in a new location on the city’s website.
As he clicked on the appropriate links on the PowerPoint presentation he displayed for officials, Bell went to the city website’s home page and clicked on an icon that reads agendas and minutes. The page opened and he explained that now the most current meeting information is there.
A click on the ‘agenda’ icon brings up the meeting agenda and another click on the “packet” icon and the entire packet for the meeting is right there. Bell said that section only has meetings from early February to date, previous meeting agendas and packets are located lower down on that page and go back to 2018.
Marine City Clerk Jason Bell gave a presentation during an April 4 Marine City Commission meeting.
The minutes from meetings, once approved, are also available by date as are full video and audio recordings of the meetings that appear on YouTube.
Another new feature offered to users is the opportunity to subscribe to email notifications’ when meeting agendas are up online. There’s a list of ten city boards from the city commission to the zoning board of appeals.
“You do not have to put a password in, it’s going to ask you for a password, you do not need it, you just have to fill in your email address twice,” Bell said. “Every one of our boards, every one of our committees and every one of our commissions is in Granicus now, we are going to start doing this from here on and forward.”
Subscribers will get an email notification as soon as a meeting agenda is posted. There’s an opportunity to select only the meetings the user would like to get or click on subscribe to all at the top of the page.
Users will also get a welcome email as well and it will note which agendas or packets, they have subscribed to.
“I think it’s a really cool feature for the public to be notified, when they’re out, when they’re available, when they can look at them and if they have any questions, they can contact the appropriate departments,” Bell said, garnering some applause from the audience.
“The applause was absolutely warranted you’ve done a really good job with this,” Commissioner Brian Ross said.
“It’s a work in progress, we’re still working out a few things, some details but we’ll get there day by day,” Bell said.
Marine City Commissioner Brian Ross complimented City Clerk Jason Bell for his work installing a new software package for the city website.
The clerk also informed the commission that he recently attended a week-long 40-hour training session at the Michigan Municipal Clerk’s Institute. He said good stuff came out of it, including some sessions on preparing for the upcoming presidential election.
“I think it’s beneficial to attend these trainings and invest in training our staff and then we can bring it back to the community and I only think it benefits everyone here in the long run,” Bell said.
He said he continues to work on updating the website with the city manager and they are also looking at installing a new phone system or updating the current one.
Bell concluded his presentation by informing the commission that for those interested, the treasurer’s webpage at the city site has the budget and audit information posted for viewing.
