The Jefferson County Council is trying to prove that old dogs can learn new tricks.
Council members have begun using CivicPlus, an online agenda management system that allows them to vote during meetings on touchpads and residents to see the votes almost instantly on the county website.
The council officially switched to the new system at the Aug. 12 meeting after approving the contract and funding for the software about a month earlier.
Councilwoman Lori Arons (District 3, Imperial) thanked County Executive Dennis Gannon and the administrative staff for providing the council members with training to use the new voting system.
“There are many features of this program that make our job easier, but more importantly, the public now has full access and transparency to all the documents that we have,” she said. “You can look at them before the meeting or after the meeting, and anything you want to find that we see, you will now be able to see.”
At the July 22 meeting, the council voted unanimously to spend $111,624.69 to renew the county’s contract with CivicPlus for a year and to expand the contract to include the CivicGov software. CivicPlus is a web development company that provides document management solutions for municipalities in the U.S., according to its website.
Documents pertaining to the county’s council, commissions and boards are now located in the Agenda & Minutes portal, jeffersoncomo.portal.civicclerk.com. When a user clicks on an upcoming or past meeting, be it for the County Council, Planning and Zoning Commission or the Board of Equalization, he or she may search through the agenda, dig through related meeting files with proposed bills and watch a video recording of the meeting once it takes place. Under the “Meeting Overview” tab, a tally of the motions and votes is populated next to each item on the agenda.
Councilman Charles Groeteke (District 4, Barnhart) said at the Aug. 12 meeting that the new system was a “great step forward for transparency” for the county government.
“There are 956 pages of this agenda available to the general public on the county website today with this new program in place,” he said. “Now that we have this new program, it’s going to take a few bugs to get worked out, as you can see this evening, but I think it’ll add better transparency to the general public and make the council itself more accountable to their constituents.”
Instead of taking roll call votes vocally at the Aug. 12 meeting, council members used a tablet device to either approve, deny or abstain from voting on a motion. Once all the votes were cast, Cherlynn Boyer, executive assistant to the County Council, put the tally up on a screen for the people in the audience to see.
Some snafus
Extra staff were at the meeting to ensure the CivicPlus rollout ran smoothly. There were a few pauses during the meeting as the council members navigated the new system.
One issue the council will have to work through, Gannon said, is processing the massive amount of paperwork associated with each agenda. Since the agenda, with all of its associated documents, was nearly 1,000 pages long, the system buffered as it processed the council’s votes.
“There’s a lot more we need to work on to make it better,” Gannon said.
The county staff is also working on a way to ensure those who watch the recorded meetings can see the votes taking place during the meeting. Right now, viewers can minimize the video recording on their computer and pull up a second window with the vote tallies under the “Meeting Overview” tab in the portal to track the votes while watching the recording.
In the future, the videos will have a graphic display of the votes so viewers don’t have to click back and forth from the “Meeting Overview” to the video. Gannon said the video graphic feature would be costly and would take some time to implement.
Better access
Councilman Bob Tullock (District 7, House Springs) said the new agenda management system allows him to better represent his constituents.
If his constituents have questions or concerns regarding meeting agenda, which is usually published on the county website the Friday before the Monday meeting, Tullock said the new system allows him more time to investigate.
“If they do have questions on Thursday evening or Friday, they can contact their councilman, and if I have any questions, I can contact staff, either Friday or Monday,” he said.
Gannon said the county is all in on the new agenda manager and thanked the staff “who have invested many hours into building” the system.
“There was no retreating on this project,” he said. “I’m looking forward to doing a lot more training on it.”