A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Communications Committee was held on July 10, 2013 at the Mountain Lakes Borough Hall.  In attendance were Andy Bulfer, Clive Knowles, Terri Olshanski, Deborah Shertzer, Mark Watrous, and Borough Council Liaison John Lester.  Absent were: Beth Grebe, Mimi Kaplan, Bob Karczewski, Nilesh Shringarpure, and Robert Tovo.

Items Put Forward by John Lester

John Lester opened the meeting with a list of items he felt should be explored:

• Investigate the feasibility, practicality and structure of reviving the Home & School Bulletin.
• Create a single Community Calendar. 
• Oversee/escalate the installation and roll out of Pub Works (workflow management software for DPW) for incident reporting.
• Examine and make recommendations on:
  • Updating the website as per the website survey -- By this, Lester meant adding features that a Monmouth University study found were best practices for municipal websites.  The results of the study are on the Mountain Lakes website under Web Committee.  The Mountain Lakes website was ranked in the top 11% of municipal websites in NJ.  Good but could be better. 
  • Volunteer opportunities and registration -- Although there is an online form on the website to make it easy to volunteer, it was felt that there is not enough visibility into volunteer opportunities and needs. 
  • Allowing people to directly add to the website -- There are many areas of the website that already may be added to including meeting minutes, notice board, legal notices, etc.  There wasn't much further discussion explicating this point.
  • Inventory existing software, services, and contracts
  • Survey all groups relative to their needs
  • How to incorporate "asset" list
  • Assess e-mail system
  • Assist Rec software implementation

Video Committee

It was mentioned that Denville has a committee devoted to producing videos of the town.  Members attend town events and activities and record them.  They have their own channel on YouTube, have a weekly show on Cablevision, and have their videos on the town website.

Additional Items Discussed by the Committee

• How to measure and monitor effectiveness of borough communications -- This is an important issue both to diagnose where the communications problems currently are and to monitor progress in remediating them.  There was some discussion but no conclusions reached.
• E-mail addresses for all committees -- It was decided that all committees should have an e-mail address in the mtnlakes.org domain to improve communication between them and the public.  How to and who would implement the decision was left till next time.
• Meeting minutes for some committees not on website -- It was decided at a policy level that all committees should have their meeting minutes on the Borough website.  How to and who would implement the decision was left till next time.
• Consistency of communications: borough-wide mailings/e-mail not on website -- It was decided that no borough-wide postal mailings or broadcast e-mail messages should be sent unless the information is already on the website.

New Outside Bulletin Board

John Lester reported on the new bulletin board being planned for the Borough Hall corner.  There was significant discussion.  It was decided that members of the community would have direct access to the new sign via a form on the website.  Some authorized users, such as Borough Hall, Recreation Committee, and Home and School Association would be able to use the form directly through a user-id/password.  Everyone else would have their submissions approved as is done with the website Notice Board today.  Guidelines for what is appropriate would have to be developed but would be similar to those of the Notice Board.  If the number of notices exceeds the capacity of the sign, the excess would be queued to await their turn. 

Communications Committee Website

The Committee will need a position on the Mountain Lakes website like other Committees.  Clive Knowles will implement.  Much of the Web Committee's previous content remains valuable and will be retained.

Committee Meeting Schedule

It was decided that the Committee will normally meet on the 2nd Weds of the month at 7:30 pm at Borough Hall.  However, since August is a difficult month, the next regular meeting will be held on Sept 11, 2013 at 7:30 pm Borough Hall.

Andy Bulfer