The February meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on February 12, 2003 at Borough Hall. In attendance were Emily Wolfe, Sally Santiago, Chairman Andy Bulfer and Borough Council Liaison, Louise Davis.

Accomplishments

• Sally Santiago put together a series of Web pages for the Mountain Lakes Educational Foundation. They include Home/Events/Committees/Calendar/Mission/Members.
  
  
• After several years of urging, the School’s Office of Technology have finally agreed to redirect the url mtlakes.org to the Borough Web site. This eliminates a continuing problem of confusion: some people thought that this URL was the town Web site and were surprised and disappointed when they didn’t get the content they expected. Mtlakes.org connotes the town of Mountain Lakes and was originally intended to be the town url. This change takes it back to its original intent.
  
  
• The Home and School Bulletin in its entirety is now on the Web. Kate McKulla, the editor and designer of the Home & School "Bulletin, sends us a pdf file each month that contains the five sections plus a gif of the front cover. Andy Bulfer installs it when it is received. The Web design was done by Bulfer and Emily Wolfe.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer put on a “Contact Us” page. Previously, clicking “Contact Us” only opened a mailto window to the Borough Hall e-mail address. Now, you get a full page listing an abundance of contact information including mailing address/telephone/fax/e-mail address for Borough Hall, Police, Volunteer Fire Dept. School Board, and DPW.
  
  
• The HPC is doing an oral history project to gather and preserve recollections of old-timers from Mountain Lakes, both current and former residents. The project uses two approaches. One is to record recollections on audio tape of people with whom they can physically meet face to face. For this, the HPC has a long questionnaire and a roster of volunteers to meet with the person and do the interview. The HPC has completed a number of interviews already of which a few have been transcribed. There are many left to do.
  
  The other approach, originally suggested by Andy Bulfer, is to contact people who live far away by e-mail and ask them to fill out a shorter questionnaire. The HPC developed an on-line questionnaire and Bulfer sent it out to 52 people who have contacted the Web site in the past regarding the historic material and old house pictures. Bulfer also sent it to 87 people whose e-mail addresses are on the MLHS Class of '64 Web site. Of the 139 e-mail messages, 16 bounced with invalid addresses. One person responded and said he had sent it on to an additional 60 of his friends and MLHS classmates!!!! We have gotten 17 responses so far, a 14% response rate. We now have a great deal of material to organize, format, and put on the Web site. The material we have so far is fascinating and we are hopeful that it will be a popular feature.
  
  
• In addition to the questionnaires, Andy Bulfer assembled a prototype Oral History section for the Web site for the HPC based on a previous design by Emily Wolfe. It contains all the e-mail questionnaire responses as well as the audio transcripts. The HPC and Web Committees are reviewing it and it will be linked to the Web site as soon as all concur.
  
  
• The Committee received a communication from a former Mountain Lakes resident who is an antique auto enthusiast. He identified the make, model, and year of one of the original old car photos, a 1908 Packard Model 30. Andy Bulfer installed the descriptive material he provided.
  
  
• The Volunteer Fire Dept. notified us that they wish to maintain their own Web material. One of their members is a professional Web designer. Andy Bulfer removed the material we had about them and replaced it with a link to their new site.
  
  
• We received a letter from the daughter of the author of the article on the History of the Tourne complaining that we had not given her mother proper credit. Andy Bulfer had obtained the article from an old Citizen newspaper article that did not provide the background of the author. Andy quickly added the attribution that she requested and wrote her back thanking her for the information and complimenting her mother on the quality of the article.
  
  

Discussion and Action Items

• Ralph Loveys recently complained that several of the Zoning/Planning Board application forms are out of date. On investigation we found that there is no e-mail address for use by either the Webmaster or the public to contact these boards. We have requested new forms from Borough Hall several times since last summer but still haven’t yet received them. Andy Bulfer will continue to pursue it.
  
  
• The Police page is still not completed. The intention originally was to put bios and photos of individual officers in order to give them a more human face. We have a number of bios and photos in hand but they are not organized and we don’t know if the set is complete. Perhaps rather than an open ended bio, we should provide a structured questionnaire to each officer to be filled out with background information about themselves. Sally Santiago and Emily Wolfe will pursue.
  
  
• The Dept. of Public Works is a major area that is not yet represented. They are responsible for water, roads, sewers, recycling, leaves and brush. They touch all of our lives. We need material about them. Andy Bulfer will pursue.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer has not made any progress on the Community Calendar. This is proposed to contain information from the H&S Bulletin, the Borough Calendar, and any other material Mountain Lakes residents wish to add.
  
  
• This History section is rich in content from the early days of Mountain Lakes but has less material about other eras. Andy Bulfer reviewed that the following people have volunteered to prepare write-ups:
  
  

  1.	Change of Borough Government	Duke Smith
  2.	Defeat of the pumped storage reservoir in the Tourne	Lynn Goldswaithe
  3.	The Synthatron story	Sandy Batty
  4.	Getting Sewers into Mountain Lakes	Ruth Harrison

  
  
  We have received write-ups from Smith and Harrison but there is still work to be done on each. Andy will pester Goldswaithe, Hogan and Harrison to complete their material. The committee made several additional suggestions for material including: Building the High School (expert: Hoke Briessendon), Transformation of Lake Drive. School into a school for the dear, the story of UN Weekend, and the story of the GAA show.
  
  
• A project to display the material on the outside Bulletin Board (the physical one on the corner) in the “What’s New” section on the front page was discussed. Doing so would assure fresh material on the front page every few days. Andy Bulfer said he envisioned a simple Web page where the person who maintains the bulletin board could input the text and click “Submit”. Bulfer will pursue with the appropriate Bulletin Board committee members.
  
  
• Sally Santiago will work with the clubs, organizations to provide updates, including those that manage their own content. Much of the material is either sparse or badly obsolete. Sally expressed exasperation at the difficulty of getting material from some clubs who willingly provide it to the H&S bulletin. The committee brainstormed the problem but did come up with a workable solution.
  
  
• In past winters, the front page has carried a link to a local radio station page that contains school closing information. Andy Bulfer reported that last Spring he did not literally erase the link but only commented it out (made it invisible). Sally Santiago will investigate and restore the link.
  
  
• Sally Santiago will check if the School Board information is up to date and fix it if it is not.
  
  
• The organization, presentation, formatting, and navigation characteristics of the prototype Oral History site were discussed. It was decided that links to/from the picture of the house referred to in the write-up would be added and with perhaps a clickable thumbnail in each write-up. It was further decided to forward the Web Committee’s recommendations on the prototype Oral History section to the HPC and work with them to finalize and install the section.
  
  
• There may be other information about the HPC that should be available on the Web site such as the application to be a historic district.
  
  
• The Borough Council information needs to be updated. The mayor has changed, and Ralph Loveys is not included. Emily Wolfe will fix it.
  
  
• It is time to update the committee and commission information. Andy Bulfer obtains the information from the Borough Clerk every year about this time. He will do so again.
  
  
• The committee received an expression of interest in volunteering from a member of the community. The conversation concerned the historic material on the Web site and it was not clear whether the person was interested in helping the Web committee or the HPC. Andy Bulfer will contact him and explore further.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer proposed reorganizing the environmental pages. Currently, the “Environment” link points to material about the Environmental Commission. However, much of the material is not about the commission but is truly about the environment and it does not include environmental information from other committees. Furthermore, the material is relatively old and the Environment Commission’s interest in the Web site has waned in recent years. Bulfer’s proposal is to build a more comprehensive environment section that would include material from:
  1. Environmental Commission,
  2. Lakes Management Committee,
  3. Trails Committee,
  4. Shade Tree Commission,
  5. Borough Hall water reports,
  6. Trash information such collection schedules, recycling, trash days, etc.
  
  
  This appears to be a relatively big job and the committee didn’t really know how to get started. It was pointed out that recruiting someone interested in the environment to assist could be helpful but it would have to be someone that has a broad, eclectic view and not a parochial interest in one committee or pet project. For now, the committee decided to take no action while it mulled the idea.
  
  
• The new Master Plan needs to be on the Web site. Andy Bulfer will see about obtaining an electronic copy.
  
  
• There are many Web pages on the site that are over 1 yr. old. A great majority of these are legitimate, e.g. material about history or old house pictures. Andy Bulfer distributed the entire list and asked the committee members to review their area and eliminate or update obsolete pages.

The next regular meeting will be on March 5, 2003 at 8 pm at Borough Hall.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman