A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on January 11, 2006 at the Mountain Lakes Borough Hall.  In attendance were Clive Knowles, Mark Watrous, George Jackson, and Chairman Andy Bulfer. 

Membership Changes

The committee welcomed new Council Liaison George Jackson.  It was decided to recommend dropping Jud Breslin who has not attended meetings for many months.  Several other membership issues were also discussed.

Activities Since Last Meeting

• Andy Bulfer received the January HSA Bulletin.  As usual, it was in one single large pdf file.  Since we display it on the Web site in six sections, Bulfer split up the file, extracted the jpg cover, and installed them all on the Web site.
  
  
• Clive Knowles worked with Duke Smith to update the 55 PLUS pages and train Smith in the use of the Notice Board and Community Calendar.  Smith later wrote a glowing compliment to Knowles, thanking him for his effort.
  
  
• Mark Watrous changed the front page and a number of other pages so that they are centered in the browser window when a monitor of very high resolution is used.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer updated the Library page at the request of the Library director, adding descriptive information about connecting to RefUSA, an on-line database, and links to federal and state tax information.
  
  
• Clive Knowles made several changes to the school closing announcements functionality on the Notice Board that had been discussed last time.  They including making the system work properly when the closing decision is made the night before rather than in the early morning hours.
  
  
• Mark Watrous changed the script that calls BBexpire to set the file permissions appropriately.  This technical change was discussed last time and protects the Notice Board from certain types of failures.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer added a new image to the front page -- a photo of the Tower Hill Sled Run with a link to its background in the history section.
  
  
• Mark Watrous changed the link to the Tri-Town Chamber of Commerce as had been requested by Marnie Vyff who apparently represents them.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer made changes to the Health Clinics page at the request of Robin Steele, Secretary of the Board of Health.
  
  
• Mark Watrous added information about the Chili Cookoff at the request of Recreation Director Denise Brennan.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer made price changes to dog/cat licenses, marriage certificates, birth certificates, etc. at the request of Borough Clerk Christina Whitaker.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer helped Kate McCulla with a calendar formatting question.  McCulla manages the Community Calendar for the Web Committee.
  
  
• As discussed last time, Andy Bulfer added appropriate technical incantations to the front page to prevent browsers from caching the page so that the most recent Notice Board announcements are always displayed.
  
  
• The Web Committee received a request from Ania Ringwelski representing Bartek Construction asking permission to use some of the old photos from the Web site in Bartek's Web site.  After discussing it with Borough Manager Gary Web, Andy Bulfer wrote to them authorizing the use.
  
  

Minutes Upload

As discussed last time, the meeting minutes upload capability had been completed and tested.  This allows committee heads to upload their own meeting minutes without the need for Web Committee involvement.  It is currently being used by the Borough Clerk for Borough Council meeting minutes and agendas and by the Woodlands Management Committee.  The committee decided to encourage a number of other committees to use it including:

1. Planning Board,
2. Zoning Board of Adjustment,
3. Lakes Management Committee,
4. Environmental Commission,
5. Recreation Commission,
6. Shade Tree Commission,
7. HPC.

Schools Emergency Closing Notifications

There was discussion of putting the actual opening times in the delayed opening announcement.  After some discussion, the Committee decided not to do so.

Tax Data on the Web

Mark Watrous reported that tax-assessor Rick DelGuercio promised to provide data on recent sales immediately and data on the reassessment results as soon as it was completed.  The Committee was concerned about timeliness and decided to urge that partial results be posted immediately rather than wait until all results are available.  The plan is to post a notice on the physical bulletin board outside of Borough Hall informing the community about the tax data's existence on the Web.

Review of Past Items

• Garden Club -- Work on this had been proposed but may have fallen in a crack.  Subsequent to the meeting Andy Bulfer ran into with Penny Leman, the garden club's representative.  Leman said she didn't know how to go about updating the content.  Bulfer explained that she could print out the pages, mark them up, and send them to Mark Watrous.  Leman said she would do so.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer has begun working with Gary Webb on a "Forms Center".  This is a web page that contains printable forms for various Borough applications and licenses.  The idea is to make all the forms available and easier to locate.  Some forms are already on the Web site but are scattered and there are more forms that need to be added.  There are some schools forms too but we plan to get started first with just the Borough forms.  All forms will be printable in pdf format and will be organized by department.  We have the technology to make each form field "hot" so that a user will be able to pull the form up on their screen, type in the content in each field, and then print out the form with the fields neatly filled in.  Beside the links on the Forms Center there will also be links to the forms on the relevant subject matter pages.

New Discussion Items

• Since the Borough has such an emphasis on volunteers, Andy Bulfer proposed to the Borough Leadership that we implement an "on-line volunteer form".  This would permit people to volunteer for any of the myriad jobs the Borough has.  The form would list the areas that are in need of volunteers.  A user could fill it out and when they click submit, it would send the information to the borough office by e-mail.  The proposal was enthusiastically accepted by Mayor Steve Shaw and Bulfer has begun implementation.  He plans to include Schools and Library volunteer positions as well.
  
  
• Andy Bulfer did a search through the entire Web site for the term '2005' and found many files that contain it.  It was decided to split the list into parts, one for each committee member, who would each look at their list and repair the references if appropriate.

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Feb 08, 2006 at Borough Hall.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman