Hundreds of pages of documents went from office to office in red folders, seeking revisions and then approval to wind up in a thick binder hand-delivered to each member of the James City County Board of Supervisors before every meeting.
The documents comprise the meat and potatoes of board meetings. The supervisors need them to make informed decisions on the matters brought before them, but the cost to print them out, edit them on paper, make revisions and then deliver freshly printed binders of the final versions to the supervisors was costing the county $600 to $800 per meeting.
But now those days are in the past thanks to NovusAGENDA, a new system implemented by the county to digitize the process. It eliminates printing costs and the staff time needed to ferry rough drafts of documents back and forth to various county offices prior to hand delivering them to the supervisors.
“Now I can just push everything else electronically and it’s right there at [the supervisors’] fingertips,” County Administrator Bryan Hill said of NovusAGENDA.
Citizens can also access NovusAGENDA to review the same meeting materials the supervisors receive. Hill said as soon as documents are ready, they will be posted to NovusAGENDA.
The system compiles all of the information relevant to each meeting. For example, if someone applies to develop land, it generates a thick stack of documents like maps, memorandums from county planning staff and assessments of how the land will be affected. The supervisors received that in print form to use during meetings, but now that NovusAGENDA is in place, they can use their tablets or computers.
“A paperless meeting system makes sense for the Board, staff and more importantly, the taxpayers,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Michael Hipple (Powhatan) said in a news release. “Anything we can do to make the agenda process thorough and efficient is a win-win. Electronic access to materials, maps and other related documents keeps constituents informed and the process open and transparent.”
The new system also introduces a much more powerful search feature. Users can specify information they want to find and then search within date ranges, allowing them to comb through board meetings looking for items of interest.
The old search feature required users to search the entire James City County website. So if someone was interested in tracking the supervisors’ discussion of parks and recreation amenities, he or she would have to turn to a search engine that looked at the entire county website instead of solely board agendas.
“I think it help makes us more open and transparent and it’s more user friendly,” said County Communications Director Jody Puckett. “It includes maps and everything, so it’s a much more robust system.”
The county will pay $8,550 per year to NovusAGENDA for the system. That price yields a savings of about $860 per month on printing costs, according to a news release announcing the adoption of the system.
Puckett said the county plans to incorporate agendas and documents from past meetings into NovusAGENDA. Once staff and the board become comfortable with the new system, the other boards that rely on the county’s website to access agendas — like the planning commission and the Chesapeake Bay Board — will be switched to the system.
“When the public goes on our agenda website, they’re going to see it structured in a much different way,” Puckett said. “And once they get used to that, they’ll find it very useful.”
Hill said county staff members have been “very receptive” to the new system.
“This is the start to get us in a more efficient manner,” Hill said. “It opens it up to everybody who sees it at the same time. I don’t have to worry about one board member getting one thing and one getting another. They’re all getting everything at the same time. And the citizens all have access to it.”
Citizens can access NovusAGENDA by visiting the county’s agenda website.
