A meeting of the Mountain Lakes Web Site Committee was held on June 11, 2008 at the Mountain Lakes Borough Hall.  In attendance were Chairman Andy Bulfer, Clive Knowles, Nilesh Shringarpure, Mark Watrous, and Borough Council Liaison Blair Schleicher-Wilson.  An invited guest, Sam Tomarchio, also attended.

Introductions

The meeting began with Sam Tomarchio introducing himself.  Tomarchio has lived for 8 years with his wife Eileen and school-age daughter on Kenilworth Rd.  His early professional background was in computer science, computer programming and system analysis but he is now Managing Director of a software consulting company.

Activities Since Last Time

• Andy Bulfer made multiple changes to track site for Mike Palazzi.  The Track organization uses these pages for communications with their coaches and team members so they work hard to keep it up to date.
• Mark Watrous put on a a lacrosse photo when Mountain Lakes won the County Championship.  This was a laborious process requiring him to review the video on YouTube, identify and capture a most important frame, format it as a jpeg, and install it on the front page.
• Clive Knowles removed SMAC Blood Test from Health Clinics page when the test was canceled.
• Nilesh Shringarpure finished the Swim team pages he had begun last time.
• Andy Bulfer installed the Consumer Confidence Report on drinking water quality that was distributed by the Borough.
• Mark Watrous put on a lacrosse photo when Mountain Lakes won the State Championship using the same process he had used before.
• Clive Knowles installed a revision of policy for Shade Tree Commission.
• Andy Bulfer helped Robin Steele with uploading Health Commission meeting minutes.
• By looking at the site error logs, Mark Watrous found a bug that chairman Andy Bulfer had inadvertently introduced and warned Bulfer about it.  It was promptly fixed.
• Clive Knowles removed the stroke and skin cancer screening from the Health Clinics page when they were over.
• Andy Bulfer installed the 2008 Mountain Lakes Municipal Budget on the Borough Web site.  This was one of the action items from the April meeting.
• Clive Knowles put on the schedule for Hub Lakes.  He had received the schedule in hard copy (something we encourage people not to give us) and had to input the data for the site.
• Andy Bulfer fixed an error on the House Pictures page: an unhappy resident had pointed out that Lowell Avenue was listed as "Lowell Road".
• Andy Bulfer updated Borough Manager Joe Tempesta's biography.  He also added Tempesta's e-mail address at a resident's suggestion.
• Andy Bulfer put on material about Joe Hollis Tennis clinics as requested by Recreation Director Denise Brennen.
• Andy Bulfer added the form for Laker Family LAX.
• Andy Bulfer put on a great deal of material about the Library summer reading program including an on-line sign-up page.
• Andy Bulfer put on the ad for recreation director and added "details" link
• Andy Bulfer installed the new Ba Da Boom flier containing information about donations, rewrote the Recreation page somewhat, put a notice on the notice board.
• Andy Bulfer put two Bear photos, a mother and cub, on the front page.  These had been taken by an Overlook Road resident last December.  The pictures were an attempt to support the Bear Awareness program held at the Library on June 11.
• Andy Bulfer removed Duke Smith's name from the Lake Drive Foundation.
• Andy Bulfer put on Ralph Wells' Oral History.
• Andy Bulfer made a technical change to the top menu that appears on many of the pages.  It is visually identical to the previous menu but is implemented with Cascading Style Sheets so that it is more disability-accessible and search engine friendly and has a drop-down context-sensitive explanation of each menu item.  The Committee had decided to roll this design out to all the pages with top menus at its Nov 2007 meeting.
• Andy Bulfer installed the water usage material that was on the site last summer, including an explanation of the problem, the usage tracking graph, and a link from the front page.  He also installed the Web form behind a password that permits the Borough Manager to update the graph data.  Bulfer briefed Joe Tempesta by telephone on how to access and use the form.
• As has become routine, Andy Bulfer received a file of Library New Books for the month and formatted the information into HTML for their section.
• As he does every month, Andy Bulfer received an electronic version of the Home and School Bulletin and added it to the Web site.  This also involves translating the calendar information contained in the bulletin to the Web site Community Calendar.

Public Comments

None.

Error Review

Mark Watrous led a discussion of his review of the error logs for the month.  Besides the bug mentioned above, he also identified another area that was throwing off errors.  After discussion, the Committee decided to take no action. 

Old Business

• Initiatives from the April meeting
  1. Forms Center
     • Police Forms -- DONE
     • Construction Department -- No Perceptible Progress [Note 1]
     • Tax Forms -- No Perceptible Progress [Note 2]
  2. Municipal Court -- No Perceptible Progress [Note 3]
  3. Broadcast E-mail -- No Perceptible Progress
  4. Borough Budget and Annual Financial Information on the Web -- DONE
  5. Legal Notices on the Web
     • Separate Section of the Web Site -- DONE
     • Cost Saving [Note 4]
  ----------
  NOTES:

  1.  The forms center currently has links to a NJ State Web site that has construction permit forms.  However the links, while not wrong, send users to a confusing place in the state site.  Joe Tempesta will suggest better link urls.

  2.  These are not as clear as they should be.  Tempesta will discuss with the Borough CFO.

  3.  Joe Tempesta said he was concerned about the hours advertised for the Municipal Court clerk's office.  However, before it can be changed on the Web site, Tempesta said he needs to finalize exactly what they should be.

  4.  Joe Tempesta said he would look into whether money can be saved by putting abbreviated notices in the newspaper with references to the full notices residing on the Web site.

• Broadcast E-mail -- There was discussion of the cost savings achievable by the Borough if this were implemented.  It was felt that the system could easily save substantially more than it costs.  This would overcome the objection that the impact on the budget would be too high.
• Community Calendar -- Clive Knowles will prepare a requirements proposal for next time.
• Beach/Tennis Tags -- Andy Bulfer reported he had not made progress on this project.

No Progress

• Search Engine
• Monthly Traffic Report

New Business

• School Web Site Improvements -- Sam Tomarchio presented his analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the current Schools Web site.  He proposed many ideas for how it could be improved.  Chairman Andy Bulfer appointed a subcommittee consisting of Tomarchio, Mark Watrous, and Nilesh Shringarpure to pursue the next steps
• MAC Web site -- Although the original MAC webmaster is now gone, it was decided to take no action on upgrading or moving this site for now.  Nilesh Shringarpure will install the changes previously requested by Ellen Emr.

Date for Next Meeting

The next regular meeting will be on Wed, July 9, 2008 at Borough Hall.  There will be no meeting in August.

Andy Bulfer,
Chairman