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By CLARK MASON
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
The Windsor Town Council is on the verge of becoming the first government body in Sonoma County to go with paperless agendas, forsaking the bulky printed reports that have been an accessory for elected officials for decades.
By equipping its top officials with Apple iPads, Windsor expects to save the reams of paper and hours of staff time required to produce the thick agenda packets council members rely upon for their meetings.
In going digital and eliminating printing costs for the twice-monthly meetings, town officials estimate the Apple iPads they are purchasing will pay for themselves in less than a year.
“We will receive the iPads in February,” Mayor Debora Fudge said Wednesday, adding the new digital tablet devices “will be really helpful.”
The seven iPads for the five council members and staff cost $5,670, including the monthly Internet service charge for a year.
That compares to printing costs and staff time of about $6,500 annually.
Besides the cost savings, council members say it’s environmentally friendlier. Not only will it reduce paper use, it also will end the practice of town employees delivering the agenda packets to the homes of council members the week prior to their meetings.
“Staff won’t be driving all over Windsor,” Fudge said of the reduction in fuel and greenhouse gases.
According to Town Clerk Maria De La O, none of the other eight city councils in Sonoma County have implemented paperless agenda programs, nor has the county Board of Supervisors.
For the Board of Supervisors, employees scan agenda packets into PDF documents, then e-mail them to two supervisors, who have iPads they purchased with their own funds, according to De La O.
A number of cities in California have gone the paperless route, including Hayward, Redwood City, Saratoga, Palo Alto, Sacramento, Los Altos Hills, Santa Cruz, Watsonville and Cupertino.
Windsor considered equipping council members with laptop computers, but chose the iPad because it is lighter and less bulky.
There were other considerations as well, such as security. A lost or stolen iPad can be pinpointed electronically, or have the data in it wiped clean by remote means, reverting to factory defaults, according to a technology consultant who addressed the council last month.
The California Government Code limits the use of the taxpayer-funded electronic devices to official business. Campaign and personal uses are prohibited.
Council members not only have to return them when they leave office, but “all information stored on the iPad may be subject to the Public Records Act,” De La O said.
Windsor council members said they will be able to access more information on the devices because agendas can have imbedded links to other websites for some topics.
Council members also will be able to get their town-related emails on the iPads.
“I think it could make us more effective and better decision makers as well,” said Windsor Councilwoman Cheryl Scholar.
Fudge said council members will not use the iPads to communicate with each other or any one else during deliberations.
“Our policy is to communicate through voice and in public so those in the meeting and watching on television know exactly what’s going on,” she said. “We want our work to be transparent.”
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This is simply an excuse to give each town council a free ipad (with free data plan). They could just as easily put the agenda packet in PDF format and put old laptops with a free linux O/S and pdf reader program in place for literally nothing.
Using old laptops would insure the device is used only for council business and save perfectly functional but dated laptops could be recycled and remain useful. Is someone seriously saying that each council member doesn’t have their own computer and can’t read the nearly universal pdf format?
This is narcissism and clear waste of public money.
I agree, in the absence of a ‘paper trail’, a document, a FOIA accountability could be lost.
No need to shred files, just delete them.
This violates the spirit of transparent government.
Reminds me of a Brown Act violation.
Do we need an I-Pad Act?
Not good.
If the information is on the iPods how is the public going to see it at the meeting?
Perhaps they will give the public iPods to see what the CC members are looking at.
Ah, but it does have that handy delete item I guess , so the public can not see what you don’t want them to see.
I see lots of violations of the Brown Act coming , folks. So be prepared to go to the District Attorney as soon as you are unable to be provided the information at the meeting.
You guys don’t get it. This is not about saving paper, it is about saving staff time. It is incredibly time consuming to bring together and print everything needed for council. It is about making government more efficient. Along with the council, this material would be made available to the public over the internet – making government more transparent.
Kind of nice that Windsor supports the Chinese worker so properly. Are you kidding me? The IPad? 1,200,000 Chinese workers compared to 25,000 American workers. Great. Merry Christmas to the American worker-you just got “scrooged”.
Not thanI believe in/care about this global-warming crap, but how much of a carbon footprint went into manufacturing iPads in china and shipping them to Windsor?
One can hear those electrons falling in the mind of Fudge and the Windsor council as they slaps themselves on the back for saving yet more firewood.
The best presents are the ones you buy with other peoples money for yourself.
Will copies be available for the public? You don’t need a Freedom of Information Act request to see the documents the councilmembers get in their packet. You can go to the City Clerk’s office and ask for all of it directly. It also should be posted on the City’s website but it might not be. I hope this doesn’t end up reducing transparency because it’s already pretty opaque as it is. I don’t want to wait to hear something at a meeting to learn about it. By then it may be too late to do anything about it. We need this information up front. Let’s make them give us the information that is sent to each City Council member ahead of their meetings.
A leftist bureaucrat without a paper file or paper document in front of them. It’s an outrage and out of character. How long will this last? Until the next computer illiterate is put in office.
Next the question bureaucrats love to ask, “where is your paperwork” will be a thing of history. Who would have thought in that little realm of Windsor?
Way to spend taxpayers money during a collective economic struggle! I wanna move to Windsor so maybe they might think about sharing taxpayers monies in hope that everyone in Windsor may become paperless and get their very own iPad!
I think the city of Windsor should send each individual who paid for their iPad a personal enote…thanking them for their contribution to the paperless movement.
Here’s my personal enote to the City of Windsor: Do your flippin JOBS and quit taking freebees from the people you work for in the name of savings! Ohhhhh FUDGE! Did I say that out loud?
Another feel-good triumph of symbolism over substance.
I can feel the planet cooling from here.