First, let me introduce the committee. The Committee members are:
- Gayle Joseph,
- Emily Wolfe,
- And, of course, Blair Wilson, our Council Liaison.
Lorin Sterns and Tom Triumph were former members of the committee who also helped in the design..

The Web Site Committee formed just over one year ago in Nov 1999. We started by developing a plan for the web site. We then contracted with GTI of Morristown to host our site and obtained the domain, mtnlakes.org. We also obtained the domain, mountainlakesnj.organd it routes to our site too although we don't publicize it. We have what we feel is a very attractive monthly rate from GTI and we have been satisfied with their service.

We then began building the site and it has grown throughout the year. We now have nearly 300 pages on the site. Usage has really taken off. During the month of November alone, we had over 1000 hits on our home page and we delivered nearly 8000 total pages to 373 unique users.

We are registered with all the major web search engines and get quite a few hits from them. We have also arranged for links to us from many other sites, such as the Morris County web site.

We have received very many favorable comments by e-mail.

When the committee began, we planned six major content areas, Borough Hall, Houses of Worship, Schools, Library, Community Organizations, and Business Directory. However, what we thought were two relatively peripheral areas have turned out to be enormously popular, the Portfolio of Old Laker House photos and the Mountain Lakes History pages.

Let me briefly sketch some of the content we provide.

	The Borough pages contain pictures and bios of all the council members and a listing of every borough committee and commission together with its mission statement and roster of members. Some commissions have substantial content as well. The Environmental Commission has an enormous amount of material on water, solid waste, wildlife, flora, trails, and environmental conditions and trends. The Planning Board has the Master Plan in its entirety. The Historic Preservation Committee and the Municipal Alliance each have descriptions of themselves and their programs and of course the Web Site Committee has a lot of materiel about itself.
	The Houses of Worship section contains a listing of the churches in town and for 3 out of 4 we have either content about them or links to their web site. In the spirit of ecumenism, we also have a listing for the Jewish Community Center in Morristown.
	For the Schools, the Board of Education has its own web site, which is completely independent of ours. We have links to their site in our Schools section and they have links to our home page. In addition, the Schools section contains listings and material on each private school and preschool in Mountain Lakes.
	The Library's page features on-line searchable access to their entire catalog so you can find any book in the Mountain Lakes Library and other Morris County libraries too, and reserve it if you wish... all from the web. In addition, there is a listing of recent Library acquisitions that is updated monthly. There is also material on the Craven miniature rooms display in the library and on General Frederick Castle and Admiral Miles Browning the two men from Mountain Lakes who won Congressional Medals of Honor in World War II.
	The Community Organizations section contains a listing of every significant community organization in town together with its mission and purpose. Many of them, such as the Garden Club, AAUW, MacDowell Club, and the Swimming Association have either additional material about them or links to their web site.
	The objectives of the Business Directory are to provide data about local businesses that is useful and helpful to residents of Mountain Lakes and to support town businesses by giving them and their products visibility. The on-line business directory has both white pages and yellow pages listings and contains businesses that advertise in the Women's Club Telephone Directory and thus have products or services that may be of interest to Mountain Lakes residents. It also has all businesses in 07046.
	The Portfolio of Laker House Photos is sponsored by the Historic Preservation Committee. It contains 418 original photos from the early days of Mountain Lakes. There are 339 pictures of 161 individual houses on 26 streets. There are also nearly 80 old photos of early life in town. Scanning and loading all these pictures has been laborious but it has been worth it. This section is the most popular area of the entire website getting about 43% of all hits, far more than even the front page. Hardly a week goes by without receiving a favorable e-mail comment from someone. This section is only about 3/4 complete and the HPC is continuing to work on it.
	The Mountain Lakes History section has a great deal of material on Mountain Lakes history and on the historic sites in town including the Grimes Household which is on the National Register of Historic Sites, Hero's Lot on which the train station now stands, the upper three lakes, and much, much more.

Let me close by describing our future plans.

Our long-range objectives for the web site are to:
- Deliver information that Mountain Lakes residents need;
- Make Mountain Lakes residents more aware of their town's history, culture, and values;
- Make government more convenient by automating common interactions with its citizens;

We believe moving in this direction is the only way to sustain our heavy hit rate and make the site be a continuing service to Mountain Lakes.

In terms of delivering information that Mountain Lakes residents need, we plan to enrich the Borough Hall section with more information on Borough Hall processes, develop methods for carrying council agendas and minutes and keeping them up to date, and offer an on-line searchable ordinance database.

We also need more information on Community organizations and to find a way to keep it current. One way might be to give those that are interested their own login, restricted to just their area, and let them manage their own content. To do all this, we'll need to expand the Committee and we're working with our Council liaison to suggest nominees.

The searchable ordinance database will be the centerpiece of the Borough Hall section. The library reports that copies of ordinances are among the most requested items about the Borough. Currently our ordinances books are time-consuming to organize and keep up-to-date, expensive to print and distribute, and inconvenient for our citizens to access. We need to have them on line and searchable, both for our citizen's convenience and to off-load the chore of dealing with them from Borough Hall personnel. Earlier, Gayle Joseph developed a proposal which we will update and present to you early next year.

The Committee, with Emily Wolfe in the lead, is planning to upgrade the graphics on the site in 2001 to give it a more professional look.

At some point as we grow, we will probably outgrow the level of service we now have with GTI. We should probably plan to upgrade it sometime during 2001.

Further out into the future, if the state ever permits municipalities to accept credit card payments, we hope to offer a 24 by 7 "Virtual Borough Hall" at which bills can be paid licenses, beach tags, and boat slips can be applied for, and routine business can be transacted -- all from the web. This will make government much more accessible and convenient for citizens and offers the potential for time and cost savings for the Borough as well.