Local Nets reach out to public

AMERICAN FORK — Feeding public information to an interested constituency has always been the challenge — or bane — of public servants.

In the not-to-distant past, folks who wanted an advance copy of an agenda from a City Council or school board could submit self-addressed stamped envelopes and hope for the best. If they wanted background material on an agenda item, they could visit City Hall or the school board office and request it after paying copying costs. In most Utah cities, that's still the norm.

With the growth of the Internet, things are changing.

Now folks who want such information from the Alpine School District or Spanish Fork city can call it up on their home computer via the Internet.

Two other Utah County cities are also going high tech — and paperless — Payson and Eagle Mountain. Those cities, however, are bypassing the Internet, opting instead to CD-ROM, which officials access with their laptops during meetings. The audience still relies on paper copies.

"We'll have it on the Internet eventually," said Payson Deputy City Recorder Pam Knight.

"I don't think the board would go back to the old system," said Colleen Bennett, secretary for the Alpine School District Board of Education and its superintendent, Vernon Henshaw.

It's been a year since an Alpine Board of Education member had to open up a large envelope stuffed with agenda-related documents. The move to paperless — using Internet-based software to access and store district data — puts background material just a mouse click away.

"It takes quite a bit of training. But the amount of paper we were going through in one month — you're talking (reams) of paper," she said. "The amount of paper being saved by this is just incredible."

The news media receives its agenda and back-up material by e-mail. But public bodies must still post paper copies of the agenda in three public places to meet legal requirements.

A key benefit for elected officials is that they can store official data on their respective hard drives for easy access, rather than in boxes stacked in their homes or offices.

"It's nice because I can go to any PC and pull my school board stuff up," Alpine School Board member Guy Fugal said. At the end of the month, he doesn't have to shred material he no longer needs.

The only downside: "I like to doodle on paper."

Spanish Fork officials are still keeping the city staff guessing about how they intend to use their new Internet-based agenda and support material Web site.

"We still don't know if they want paperless or hard copies," Deputy City Recorder Connie Swain said of council members. "This is our first try and I think it's pretty cool."