A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on September 14, 2005 at the Mountain Lakes Borough Hall.  In attendance were Clive Knowles, Mark Watrous, and Chairman Andy Bulfer.  Absent were Council Liaison Ralph Loveys and Jud Breslin.

Activities Since Last Meeting

The last meeting was in mid-June and a lot has happened since then.  Here is a list:

• Mark Watrous installed updates to the Housing Rehab Program from Gary Webb.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer put articles about the West Nile Virus and Lyme Disease on the Health Commision page at the request of Robin Steele, secretrary of the Health Commission.
  
  
• At the request of Gary Webb, Andy Bulfer added documents on the Setback Tree Removal Ordinance and Permit Application to the Planing Board and Zoning Board pages.  He also added a page on the Street Tree Management Plan to the Shade Tree Commission page.
  
  
• In conjunction with the above change, Andy Bulfer activated a "Right of Way" spreadsheet on the Shade Tree Commission page that he had previously developed at the request of Jay Evelth but it had never been linked.  This enables a homeowner to determine the exact width of the Borough right of way in front of their house.
  
  
• Emily Wolfe and Mark Watrous did a a huge amount of work over the summer to get the information about the summer recreation programs, which was terribly incoherent and out-of-date, organized, formatted, installed, and consistent.
  
  
• Clive Knowles updated the "Welcome" letter for the 55 PLUS (Senior Citizens) group.  He also posted their Fall Schedule of activities and put a "What's New" item on the Home Page linking to it.  He briefed the group on the Mountain Lakes Notice Board and encouraged them to use it.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer made a minor correction to the Craig School listing on the Schools page at the request of Julie Day who runs the school.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer formatted and installed an hilarious write-up provided by HPC member Pat Rusak written by one of the first families to move to Mountain Lakes in 1911.  It wasn't quite like the ads said it would be.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer added a page describing the new computer system planned by the Mountain Lakes Library.
  
  
• Clive Knowles received voluminous material about Hub Lakes including all Mountain Lakes matches and organized it and put it in the Recreation section.
  
  
• At our last meeting, it was felt that too few people know about the Notice Board capability.  At the Committee's request, Andy Bulfer prepared an e-mail describing the Notice Board, its advantages and how to put a notice on it and sent it to the heads of all community organizations, the chairs of all Borough committees, and everyone at Borough Hall whose e-mail address he knew.
  
  
• At the request of the HPC, Andy Bulfer changed the contact for ordering historic pictures from Joan Nix to Pat Rusak.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer and Mark Watrous worked with Wendy Vandame to almost completely redo the UN Weekend pages.  They added information about becoming a host family, the schedule of events, the committee members, the poster contest, and the Rice award.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer updated Louise Davis' biography on the Borough Council page.
  
  
• Kate McKulla sent an e-mail to all community organizations requesting their event schedules for the Community Calendar.  She received a strong response and added many items to the calendar.
  
  
• Mark Watrous added meeting minutes for the Recreation Commision.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer added a back-to-school slide sequence to the Home Page consisting of pictures of the four Borough schools.  The picture of MLHS is of only the doorway since the school is so torn up by construction that no reasonable camera angle could be found.
  
  
• The Star-Ledger is currently working on a town profile of Mountain Lakes to publish in their real estate section on Friday, Sept. 30.  The reporter requested a couple of good color photos for possible use with the story.  Andy Bulfer provided a total of 8 high-resolution color photos.  Most of them have appeared on the Web site but are recent pictures, not old photos.  The Star Ledger seemed pleased but did not commit to using any of them.
  
  
• Alyce Garver, one of the two people who run Welcome Women requested a notification be put on the Web site that e-mail to them should have the words "Welcome Women" in the Subject line.  Andy Bulfer did her one better.  He programmed the site so that when the e-mail link is clicked, it automatically puts "Welcome Women" in the Subject line.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer added the Park Lakes Tennis Club to the Community page.  Somehow it had been neglected when the Community page was coded.  Bulfer also cleaned up the page and removed dated material.
  
  
• At the request of the Borough Clerk, Andy Bulfer formated the list of landscapers licensed to perform work in Mountain Lakes and installed it on the Borough Hall page.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer worked with Margarethe Laurenzi, Chair of the Medical Needs Foundation, to edit the existing material about the organization.  They still have to put on information about the SPIRIT 5K and an entry form pdf.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer was contacted by Paul Schorb, head of the Environmental Commission.  Schorb said they have a number of ideas for additional content they would like on the Environmental Commission page.  Bulfer strongly encouraged him and promised that if they would send it, the Web Committee will put it on promptly.
  
  
• We received the September H&SA Bulletin from Diane Burch.  Unlike previous months, it was in one single large pdf file.  Since we display it on the Web site in six sections, Andy Bulfer had to split up the file, extract out the jpg cover, and install them all on the Web site.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer noticed the external Web site for the Community Church has been disabled.  He notified a senior church member about the situation.  When it was not resolved immediately, Bulfer removed the link to it on the Houses of Worship page. The link can easily be restored when the Community Church decides what they want to do.
  
  

Committee Organization and Roles

As the fall season starts, Chairman Andy Bulfer felt that it would be a good time to have a broader discussion of the committee's structure:

• Should we have clearer roles and responsibilities?
• Are we organized right?
• Is the work distributed properly?
• Do we need more members?
• What can we do to make it more fulfilling for everyone?
• Is it time to have a new Chairman?

There was extensive discussion.  The Committee concluded that no changes in roles, responsibilites, or organization were warranted.  The clear preference was to continue to distribute the work on an ad hoc basis.  There was no desire for a new chairman.  A suggestion for improvement was that we need to be more consistent about responding to each other's e-mail, particularly when it documents an accomplishment or asks a question. 

The Committee membership appears to have declined to just 3 active members [see the item below on Emily Wolfe's possible resignation] and if that doesn't change, the attendees felt we should recruit more members.

Review of Past Items

• Last time it was reported that the HPC had contacted the Web Committee with a number of ideas regarding additional content and format.  We encouraged them but so far, they have not gotten back to us.  Andy Bulfer will follow up with HPC Chairman Jim Cinnamond.
  
  
• The formating and content of the Rec pages still needs considerable work.  No decision was made.
  
  
• We have not heard anything more from Denise Brennan and Ann Mucci regarding the "Grant Action Committee".  This is a committee said to be constituted by the school board whose objective is to coordinate funding-raising and grant applications across all the organizations in town.  Since we haven't heard from them, we have taken the GAC link off the Borough Hall page.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer has not yet added to the HPC pages a seminal speech by John Steen to the Borough Council.  We recently received a second request to install it from the HPC who had themselves been pestered by Steen.
  
  
• The Committee asked Mark Watrous to finalize his software that allows Committee heads and the Borough Clerk to upload their own meeting minutes.  He will install it for the Borough Clerk, Recreation Commission, Lakes Management Committee, Woodlands Management Committee, and soon, the Environmental Commission.  The Web Committee also maintains its meeting minutes on the Web site but needs no help in uploading them.
  
  

New Discussion Items

• Emily Wolfe has tendered her resignation to the Committee.  Andy Bulfer called her and urged her to reconsider since she has contributed so much to the graphical design of the Web site and we need her graphic design talent and skills.  Wolfe told Bulfer she would think about it.
  
  
• Many Community areas are out of date.  So are a few of the Borough Committees.  Mark Watrous will audit the Community pages and contact those organizations whose content is obsolete.  He will consider only organizations whose content is hosted on our Web site.  Andy Bulfer will do the same for the Borough pages.
  
  
• We need to decide what to do about the Business section which in its current form is impossible to keep up to date.  It was originally intended to be a service to businesses located in town or that serve the town and to residents looking for a product or service.  Andy Bulfer said he hates to give up on it since he believes it is part of the Borough's responsibility to support its businesses who are taxpayers too.  But the Business section is not working now and we need to either get rid of it or figure out how to design it so that it works and we can keep it up to date.  There was discussion of alternatives but none was compelling.  No decision was made.
  
  
• Our hosting company, GTI, is still causing us stress.  They deliver Web pages and mail swiftly and reliably which is our overarching requirement.  But they have eliminated many capabilities we used to have.  Most recently, they have turned off all but Andy Bulfer's secure shell (ssh) access because they are extremely concerned about a security hole in the ssh software.  The committee discussed looking for and migrating to another ISP.  Andy Bulfer even prepared an informal RFP.  However, the feeling was that switching will be a significant amount of work, other ISPs are likely have the same or different problems, and switching has the potential to be a nightmare.  It was decided to continue with GTI but Bulfer will call them and see if he can resolve the ssh issue.
  
  
• The bright spot in our portfolio is the Notice Board which appears to be working brilliantly.  It's a wonderful innovation and an excellent community resource.  A victim of its own success, it has become rather long on the home page, because submitters place longer notices than we had anticipated and submit them further in advance so they linger longer.  The Committee asked Clive Knowles to add guidelines on notice length and timing to the submission page.
  
  

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Oct 12, 2005 at Borough Hall.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman