A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on Feb 09, 2005 at Borough Hall.  In attendance were Clive Knowles, Mark Watrous, Emily Wolfe, Chairman Andy Bulfer, and Council Liaison Ralph Loveys.

Activities Since Last Meeting

• Andy Bulfer added material to the Shade Tree Committee pages including pictures from Arbor Day.  He also added a "right of way" spreadsheet requested by STC member Jay Evelth but did not link it to the site because of problems with it and because it did not contain explanatory text.  Subsequently there was a long string of e-mail between Bulfer and members of the STC discussing the issues.  The STC decided to delay the spreadsheet while they discuss it.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer added material to the Woodlands Committee pages provided by Chairman Jerry Uhrig including their recent minutes and material about their priority list.
  
  
• Clive Knowles began working on an entry form for the new Bulletin Board feature and socialized it with some of the Committee members.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer updated the boat rack/ring pages and put a notice about them on the front page.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe worked on updating the Police pages as was decided at our last meeting.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer added material about a new Mountain Lakes Library database search service called " Jersey Clicks".  He also put a notice on the front page.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe worked with Tom Carr of the Environmental Commission to update their pages.

Migration to the New Server at GTI

The need to move has become urgent.  The old server has become more flaky and unreliable.  Because the server is no longer supported by the manufacturer, GTI cannot patch security problems and the server is so subject to hacker attacks that they have had to disconnect it from their monitoring and maintenance systems.  As a result, it goes down frequently and the outages are not immediately detected.  Another result is they cannot fix problems remotely, someone has to be physically on-site, so that when outages occur on weekends, they are usually not fixed until Monday morning.

The Committee discussed and approved a plan of action that will result in accelerating the move to the new server.

New Discussion Items

• The Committee received a presentation by Marnie Vyff of a proposal she made to the Borough Council for improving the graphical design of the Web site.  After she left, the Committee discussed it.  Ralph Loveys said he would work through the Borough Council to provide a response to Vyff.
  
  
• There was a discussion of the needs of the Police for e-mail.  Currently, there are four police officers who have e-mail addresses: R.Tovo, J.Mullaney, S.Ough, B.Valentine.  There is also an e-mail address: police@mtnlakes.org which originally was planned to forward to Chief Tovo but currently forwards to Borough Manager Gary Webb.  Emily Wolfe reported that these e-mail addresses are almost never used because the officers do not know of their existence and, in the case of Tovo, his PC is not configured for it.  Tovo told Wolfe that the State may require all police officers to have e-mail, 23 in the case of Mountain Lakes.  The Committee is willing to set up e-mail addresses as required but is not responsible for configuring PCs or training officers in the use of e-mail.  Ralph Loveys will discuss the situation with Webb.
  
  (The police@mtnlakes.org address was originally intended as an additional non-emergency mechanism for the community to communicate with the police. Bulfer mentioned that he had even urged that the address be painted on the rear bumpers of the police cars to build awareness among citizens.)
  
  
• It was requested that the Borough Council meeting time be clarified on the Borough Council page.  Andy Bulfer will handle.
  
  
• An HTTP file uploading capability was suggested as a way for Committee Heads to upload their meeting minutes to the site.  We already have the capability of detecting what minutes are there and formatting a web page to list them with a link to each.  A capability to upload them is the only thing remaining to enable Committee Heads to put on their own meeting minutes with no Web Committee involvement whatsoever.  Mark Watrous will look into the technology required.
  
  

Review of Past Items

• A project to display in the "What’s New" section the material on the Bulletin Board (the physical one on the corner) was discussed.  At last month's meeting, Jud Breslin was appointed to socialize it with the Trustees of the Bulletin Board.  Clive Knowles was appointed to support him.  Knowles has begun working on a mock-up of the entry page but a meeting with the Trustees has not been scheduled.  The Committee discussed the mock-up and made several suggestions for changes.
  
  
• The project to use the Web to order beach & tennis tags was discussed.  The objective would be to make the process more convenient for residents by allowing 24x7 ordering from the comfort of their home or office.  Ralph Loveys reported he had discussed it with Borough Manager Gary Webb and the reaction was favorable assuming the economics and banking/accounting arrangements can be worked out.  Andy Bulfer recommended an e-commerce company, Merchant America to do the credit card processing.  The Committee decided to contact this company to discuss the application.  Andy Bulfer will do so getting Gary Webb and Borough Financial Officer Dana Merville involved as required.  Bulfer pointed out that there is some urgency.  The sale of tags begins May 1.  The availability of the Web option should be announced to the community in the April HSA Bulletin whose deadline is March 9.  There is no time to waste.
  
  

Unfortunately, little progress has been made on the following older items:

• 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.  Emily Wolfe will undertake this project.
  
  
• The Committee has been asked to prepare Objectives for 2005.  Jud Breslin will prepare a draft of written objectives and forward it to the rest of the Committee for review.
  
  
• The Community Church site needs updating.  Jud Breslin will check what they wish to do.  One of the members of the Committee said they would do it for a nominal fee.
  
  

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Wed Mar 9, 2005 at Borough Hall.  For planning purposes, assume the meetings after that will be on Apr 20 and May 11.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman