PORT ANGELES — The City Council discussed bringing City Hall up to speed in the digital age during a retreat Saturday.
Proposals to start using Facebook and other social media for city projects and purchase laptop computers for council members received support from the seven-member council.
No decisions were made at the approximately six-hour meeting at Olympic Medical Center, which was intended to review policy and set goals for the rest of the year.
Staff members proposed purchasing a small laptop for each of the council members in order to make it easier to comply with record retention laws and reduce the amount of paper the council uses.
A Dell Netbook, costing $500 each, was used as an example.
Staff members told the council that the computers would allow them to do all of their council business on one computer, making it easier to track documents created by council members for city business.
Any documents they create doing council-related work are subject to public disclosure laws.
Returned to city
The computers would be returned to the city when they leave the council, and the documents they created would be stored, staff said.
The council members also could use the laptops during council meetings. They would be small enough to not be visible by the audience.
City Clerk Janessa Hurd noted the council mostly deals with paper.
“That’s not where we are headed,” she said.
Council member Brooke Nelson spoke the most enthusiastically about the idea at the meeting.
“It just makes sense,” she said.
Even Deputy Mayor Don Perry, who jokingly de-scribes himself as computer illiterate, agreed.
“I think it’s something we should do immediately,” he said.
City Finance Director Yvonne Ziomkowski said the city has money for the laptops in its budget for information technology.
During the discussion on the use of social media, City Manager Kent Myers said staff will propose three city projects or issues that could have their own Facebook page.
The purpose, he said, is to better communicate with the public as the ways people receive information evolve.
Other items
Also at the meeting, council and staff discussed the city budgeting process, how to respond to questions raised during the public comment period at council meetings, economic development efforts and the events in September that will kick off the start of dam removal on the Elwha River.
With questions from the public, the council members agreed to place issues raised by residents on future meeting agendas if it needs to be addressed or they feel they need to respond to a comment. Currently, the public comment format prohibits the council members from responding to comments and questions from residents during the public comment period.
Myers said Olympic National Park intends to hire an event planner in March for the dam removal festivities.
City spokeswoman Teresa Pierce, council member Cherie Kidd and Myers attended the park’s first dam removal event planning meeting Thursday.
Myers said a concert has been proposed for Civic Field. No other details were mentioned.
Pierce said TV screens may be set up at The Gateway transit center and other locations to broadcast events near the dams themselves.
The park is estimating that between 5,000 and 10,000 people will attend the events, scheduled Sept. 16 and 17.
No events have been determined, they said.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
