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

The Committee welcomed Kate McKulla who was appointed committee by the Borough Council on Oct 14. Kate is an experienced graphic artist and electronic publicist. Until recently she has been editing and publishing the Home and School Bulletin. Her husband is a professional Web designer and technologist who can help her if she needs it.

Activities Since Last Meeting

• Andy Bulfer developed and installed an important new feature: a Community Calendar. This has been in our planning for over a year. The calendar is nicely laid out and attractive, simple and clean. It shows a month of events at a glance. By clicking, you can view any month of any year. You can click on any event to see a more detailed description and a contact name. There is a link at the bottom for an event chairman to submit an event for inclusion.
  
  
• Kate McKulla has been assigned responsibility for keeping the Community Calendar up-to-date. This is a natural assignment for her since she is very knowledgeable about goings-on in town from her work on the H&SA Bulletin. She has already done a fantastic job and the calendar is loaded with events over the next six months.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer received and installed 5 full Oral Histories from Margarethe Laurenzi who is running the project for the HPC. These are documents that were an interview with an old-timer recorded on audio tape and transcribed. The five are: Skip Watts, Norman Grimes, Ruth Watts, and 2 from Carl Schnoor. They are long and rather difficult reading because they are transcribed stream-of-consciousness audio. Although they could stand some organization and editing, they are nevertheless fascinating.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer received several completed HPC recollections questionnaires from former residents, which he installed in the Voice of the Past section. In contrast to the Oral Histories, these are the type where a person fills out a short e-mail questionnaire. There are now 35 such questionnaire items in the “Voices from the Past” section on the Web site.
  
  
• Sally Santiago installed material about the Home and School workshops and bake sale in “What’s New”. She also put in a notice about the Medical Needs Foundation.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer received electronically from Kate McKulla the November Home and School Bulletin and installed it on the Web site.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer installed updated Library acquisitions, books-on-tape lists, and video lists at the request of the Director of the Mountain Lakes Library. These are carried on the front page of the Library section and the Director feels they are quite popular. She says people use them to quickly browse what is new in the Library or to select a video to withdraw.
  
  
• At the request of Robin Steele, Andy Bulfer brought the pet license material up-to-date for 2004.
  
  
• Andy cleaned up the short-cut list on the left of the front page and changed its order, putting the important Community Calendar, H&SA Bulletin, and Borough Council at the top and the less important Location, Links, FAQs, and Contact Us at the bottom.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe installed a new jpg on the front page for the fall season.
  
  

New Discussion Items

• There was discussion of Objectives for 2004. The committee reviewed the overall goals of the Web site:
  
  
  • 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;
  
  
  and decided to add a 4th for 2004:
  
  
  • Make the Web site a Borough communications medium by the publishing and delivering information from the Borough Government, Schools, and Community organizations.
  
  
  The thought is that the Web site could do more to communicate with Borough residents, particularly since it has been decided to halt publication of the Borough Newletter for cost reduction reasons.
  
  It was decided that the Borough may have its own section in the H&SA Bulletin and we will give that a prominent place on the Web site.
  
  
• It was proposed that the Web site carry notifications of emergency school closing on the front page. The objective would be to make it easier for residents to know about emergency closings, delayed openings, or early closings. A number of ideas were discussed. Andy Bulfer will prepare a concrete proposal and then several members of the committee will meet with Dr. Kazmark, the schools superintendent to discuss it.
  
  
• Kate McKulla volunteered to update the picture on the front page to one more appropriate for Thanksgiving.
  
  

Review of Past Items

• Sally Santiago will obtain and install information about the Town Club Holiday House Tour later in the year. The committee asked that she work with the Town Club to see if people can register for tickets on the Web.
  
  
• The Garden Club has requested we update their material including officers and events listing. However, Sally Santiago has not received anything. She will contact them again for the material
  
  
• Several of the Zoning/Planning Board application forms are out of date. Also, there is no e-mail address for use by the public to contact these boards. Louise Davis obtained the forms from Borough Hall as MS Word files but the committee has not made much progress in converting them to PDF and installing them in the Planning Board/Zoning Board sections. Andy Bulfer will take on the job of doing so.
  
  
• The new Master Plan update needs to be on the Web site. Louise Davis reported it is not extensive: a simple 1-2 page update. Davis had obtained it as an MS Word file but it may have fallen through the cracks. We will look for it and get it installed.
  
  
• The Dept. of Public Works is a major area that is not yet represented. They are responsible for water, roads, sewers, recycling, leaves, and trash. They touch all of our lives. The committee would like to have a section about them including who they are, how they are organized, what their day-to-day activities are, how to contact them, their equipment, a group picture, etc. No decision was made.
  
  
• This History section is rich in content from the early days of Mountain Lakes but has less material about other eras. Andy Bulfer said 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 and they are installed. Andy Bulfer will pester Goldswaithe and Batty to complete their material. In the past, the committee has made several additional suggestions for material including: Building the High School (expert: Hoke Briessendon), Transformation of Lake Drive School into a school for the deaf, the story of UN Weekend, and the story of the GAA show.
  
  
• A project to display in the “What’s New” section the material on the Bulletin Board (the physical one on the corner) was discussed. Doing so would assure a constant supply of fresh material on the front page. Andy Bulfer said he envisioned that the material could be inserted with a simple Web form wherein someone could input the text and click “Submit”. However, Louise Davis reported there would be operational problems if the keepers of the Bulletin Board were asked to do it. Louise Davis pursued it with Gary Webb but so far, it appears too burdensome for the Bulletin Board staff to undertake. For now, we will drop this item.
  
  
• The committee would still like to have links from particular old house pictures to the oral histories of past residents of that house. Andy Bulfer will add this to his to-do list.
  
  

  Date for Next Meeting

  The next regular meeting will be on January 14, 2003 at Borough Hall.

  Andy Bulfer,
  Chairman