Category: Communication

My BIG Idea: Openness, Transparency & Better Communications

You've probably seen the segment "My BIG Idea" on the NBC Nightly News where Democrats running for president talk to Harry Smith about their big ideas, how to pay for them and the impact on voters. At first, I thought this was a bit hokey, but then I got to like the idea and decided to publish my own BIG Idea, which is: Openness, Transparency & Better Communications in local government!

There are several things I would like to accomplish to achieve that goal in Newtown:

(1) The Township should implement a text messaging and social media based “emergency" notification system that can ALSO be used to notify residents of public meetings and other official news from the Township.

I surveyed over 100 people about such a system (e.g., Savvy Citizen which would cost about $300 per month). 82% of respondents said they would opt-in to such a system. Currently, the only such system available to residents is a free service called ReadyBucks, which is pitiful - it only reports such things as flash floods, sever thunderstorms, etc., which is information we all get from a number of other free sources!

See the survey results and more information, comments from respondents pro and con, etc..

(2) Searchable minutes of meetings (DONE!): Very early on in my tenure in January, 2018, I requested that the minutes posted to Newtown Township’s website be converted to searchable PDF format. Searchable PDFs are useful for retrieving documents from a document repository (e.g., computer disk drive) and useful to find the location of words and phrases within documents.

My request was quickly implemented by the Township and now every PDF version of minutes going back two or more years is searchable. For more on that, read "Basic Document Management" in this Blog Post.

(3) Streaming Indexed Video: Just as it is easier to find an item in the minutes if the document is searchable, it is also easier to locate an agenda item in the streaming video of Board of Supervisors (BOS) meetings if the videos are “indexed.”

Here’s how this is implemented in EVERY other local municipality (Lower Makefield, Middletown, Northampton, Upper Makefield, Wrightstown):

The agenda/Meeting Index is displayed alongside the video screen. Viewers can jump to any section of the video that corresponds with an agenda item merely by clicking on the item in the “Meeting Index.” It’s a travesty that Newtown stands alone in NOT having this option even though it uses the exact same video streaming software as other townships! For more on that, read "Newtown BOS Website Video Streaming Improvement" in this Blog Post.

(4) Website Analytics: At the June 13, 2018, BOS meeting, Josephine Vlastaris, former Chair of the Technology Committee, recommended using Google Analytics to monitor traffic and bounce rates for the township website, and make changes to pages as needed (see her presentation here). The Committee suggested that the following reports be created on a monthly basis:

• Page Views (e.g., the 25 most visited pages)
• Demographics of Users (Age/Gender distribution)
• Top 25 Landing and Exit Pages
• Behavior Flow (where do visitors go from landing pages)
• Device Categories (desktop/mobile/tablet)
• Browser source, i.e., Chrome, Firefox, IExplore

This information is critical for making improvements to the site and ensuring easy access to important information. Even though the Township already has a Google Analytics account set up to measure and report on its website traffic (the code is already on every page), the BOS decided against creating periodic reports citing a "lack of need to do so." I should note that it takes about 2 minutes to produce a useful analytics report from Google!

(5) Social Media: Of the 53 local government websites studied by the Bucks County Courier Times, 35 (66%) had active Facebook pages, 25 (47%) were active on Twitter and 13 (25%) had YouTube channels (source: "How Does Newtown Township's Website Stack Up?") . Newtown Township has no social media presence whereas the Police Department does have an excellent FB page and Twitter account!

(6) Glossary of Municipal Terms: MS4, PRD, LST, EIT, SALDO, Liquid Fuels Program, Impervious Surface, Sketch Plan, Conditional Use, Spot-Zoning, etc. These are just some of the acronyms and terms a Newtown Township Supervisor has to learn to do his or her job. Perhaps more importantly, township residents must understand these terms if they are expected to participate in local government. To that end, I have created the first-of-its-kind Glossary of Municipal Terms on my website.

A similar glossary of terms should be available on the Township’s website. Note that many terms link to related information on my website. The Township’s glossary would, of course, link to repeated information on the Township site.

This all relates to the poor use and management of digital assets by the Township, which appears to be living in the 1990’s as far as its use of modern communication tools goes. 

Posted on 26 Jun 2019, 01:48 - Category: Communication

How Does Newtown Township's Website Stack Up?

A recent analysis of municipal websites and their social media pages by Bucks County Courier Times (BCCT) found that most sites succeed as “one-stop shops for information — budgets, agendas and minutes, videos of meetings and planning documents — that residents can access,” but others offer the “bare minimum.”

Where does the Newtown Township website sit on this “spectrum?”

According to data published by the BCCT, the NT Township’s site compares very well regarding what I would call basic content for a municipal informational website (see Table 1).

Of concern to me are meeting minutes and video recordings of Board of Supervisors (BOS) meetings. I’m primarily concerned about how much detail is included in minutes and how easy (or difficult) it is to search for and find specific information in the minutes or in the video recordings.

Basic Document Management

Very early on in my tenure in January, 2018, I requested that the minutes posted to Newtown Township’s website be converted to searchable PDF format. Searchable PDFs are useful for retrieving documents from a document repository (e.g., computer disk drive) and useful to find the location of a word(s) within the document.

My request was quickly implemented by the Township and now every PDF version of minutes going back two or more years is searchable.

On my Mac computer I can find any searchable PDF document stored in any folder that contains a certain word or phrase any where within the document (I was told that this is not possible to do on the computers used by Township employees). Using a PDF reader, anyone can now search the minutes for a word or phrase after downloading. It is not necessary to scroll page by page to find what you are looking for! Residents can also copy and paste sections of the minutes into other documents and posts to social media sites such as Facebook. However, only the version of the minutes on the website is official.

Searchable versions of minutes, however, would not be of much benefit if the minutes themselves did not contain important information about decisions made by Supervisors and comments from the public. The PA Sunshine Law regarding minutes of public meetings, specifies the bare minimum requirements:

"Written minutes shall be kept of all open meetings of agencies [the Township].  The minutes shall include:

1. The date, time and place of the meeting.
2. The names of members present.
3. The substance of all official actions and a record by individual member of the roll call votes taken.
4. The names of all citizens who appeared officially and the subject of their testimony."

On advice of their solicitors, some townships obey the “letter of the law” and include only minimal details. Why? Lawyers want to minimize exposure to legal challenges that can arise from minutes containing info that is open to misinterpretation or that reflects some unintentional bias. As an elected official, however, I feel it is my duty to provide as much information about the as reasonable and I expect the minutes to offer more than what is the bare minimum as required by law.

Minutes are historical records of the Township. Consequently, in my opinion, they should include enough detail to help the next Township officers 6 to 10 years down the road when the same issue pops up again. It’s also helpful for voters who would like to know the opinions of their elected officials. When I research issues, it’s helpful to see the nature of the discussion that occurred previously.

Let me cite an example. At a recent Newtown Board of Supervisors meeting there was a good deal of discussion about a Resolution Definition. The draft minutes did not include any details about comments made by residents or the Supervisors regarding the resolution. For example, the draft minutes only stated “Resident [name] commented on the resolution.” Also, the minutes did not record who voted yea and nay, but merely stated the resolution passed 4-1.

Clearly, the draft was in violation of Sunshine rule #3 above. More importantly, I believe it should have included more details of the conversation, such as “Resident [name] expressed concern about the costs associated with the resolution.” I am happy to report that the final approved minutes included this information.

I examined the minutes posted to local municipality websites to see if they provided what I consider adequate details and if they are searchable. The results are shown in Table 2.

Streaming Indexed Video

Just as it is easier to find an item in the minutes if the document is searchable, it is also easier to locate an agenda item in the streaming video of meetings if the videos are “indexed.” Figure 1 shows an example of an indexed video recording of a Board of Supervisors meeting. Viewers can jump to any section of the video that corresponds with an agenda item merely by clicking on the item in the “Meeting Index,” which is displayed side-by-side with the video.

Every local municipality that features streaming videos of meetings – EXCEPT Newtown Township – includes video indexing (see Table 3).

Website Analytics

Using Google Analytics it is possible to determine the number of total website page views and visitors, and to identify poorly performing as well as top performing web pages, where visitors came from (referrers), which pages they land on, how long they stayed on the website, time of day of access, and visitor demographics such as age, gender, and geographical location. This information is critical for making improvements to the site and ensuring easy access to important information.

According to the BCCT report, “Of the 52 respondents, 35 municipalities said they could not access, did not track or had incomplete data for how many people accessed their websites in 2017.” The 15 responding municipalities with that information had a combined total of 826,326 visitors to their websites. Bensalem, Middletown and Horsham garnered the most visitors in 2017, at 168,653, 103,795 and 103,260 respective viewers.

The Newtown Township website had 42,539 unique visitors overall in 2017. For a month-to-month comparison, there were 3,690 unique visitors in May 2017 and 1,953 unique visitors in May 2018. According to the BCCT report, nine of the 18 websites it analyzed — including that for Bucks County — experienced declines in traffic between May 2017 and May 2018.

At the June 13, 2018, BOS meeting, Josephine Vlastaris, Chair of the Technology Committee, recommended using Google Analytics to monitor traffic and bounce rate for the township website, and make changes to pages as needed. The Committee suggested that the following reports be created on a monthly basis:

1. Page Views (e.g., the 25 most visited pages)
2. Demographics of Users (Age/Gender distribution; )
3. Top 25 Landing and Exit Pages
4. Behavior Flow (where do visitors go from landing pages)
5. Device Categories (desktop/mobile/tablet)
6. Browser source, i.e., Chrome, Firefox, IExplorer

Even though the Township already has a Google Analytics account set up to measure and report on its website traffic, the BOS decided against creating periodic reports citing a lack of need to do so.

Social Media Use

Of the 53 local government websites studied by BCCT, 35 (66%) had active Facebook pages, 25 (47%) were active on Twitter and 13 (25%) had YouTube channels. Newtown Township has no social media presence (see Table 4).

However, the Newtown Police Department has an active Twitter account (@Newtown_Police) and Facebook page.

This means that whenever the Township would like to reach out to citizens via social media, it must do so through the Police Department! Recently, for example the NT Police Twitter account poisted this notice for hiring a Township Recording Secretary:

The tweet linked to a CrimeWatch page for further information.

Posted on 07 Feb 2019, 01:30 - Category: Communication

Glossary of Municipal Terms

MS4, PRD, LST, EIT, SALDO, Liquid Fuels Program, Impervious Surface, Sketch Plan, Conditional Use, Spot-Zoning, etc. These are just some of the acronyms and terms a Newtown Township Supervisor Definition has to learn to do his or her job.

Perhaps more importantly, township residents must understand these terms if they are expected to participate in local government.

To that end, I have put together a Glossary of Municipal Terms on my website (here), which is available from every page on the site (see the big blue button in the righthand column).

This is my personal glossary of terms that I believe are relevant to Newtown residents. Hopefully, it will help residents when they read the minutes of meetings or watch Board of Supervisors (aka BOS Definition) meetings on Cable TV.

This Glossary is more than a simple list of terms and definitions. It also includes links to related information and resources on this and other websites such as news summaries, blog posts, videos, podcasts, newsletter articles, etc. Therefore, it can also be used as an index to information on this site.

Whenever you see this button Definition on a page you will be able to access the definition of the term, acronym, or phrase immediately preceding it. 

I will continually add many new terms to the Glossary to make this a truly valuable resource. If you have any terms you'd like to see added to this Glossary, contact we via email: john@johnmacknewtown.info

Posted on 08 Oct 2018, 01:38 - Category: Communication

Got Potholes, Broken Street Light, Dead Deer on Road? Who You Gonna Call?

One item on the agenda of last night’s Technology Committee meeting concerned “Resident Reporting Methods.” One of the missions of this committee is to “improve communications between the Township and its residents” (find the mission statement here).

A committee member wondered if residents were aware of how to report a specific issue such as a pothole to the Township. “If you call the main number and you have to go through several cycles before reaching the pothole people,” he said, “that would not be good.”

Actually, there is a better way to communicate with the Township to report a specific concern. It’s an online form that residents can use (find it here). You need to enter your name, street address and email address, then select one of the following problems/concerns:

• Pot Holes/Road Issues
• Street Lights
• Traffic Lights
• Hit Deer/Animal
• Wild Animal(s)
• Business License
• High or Overgrown Grass
• Excessive Noise
• Work Without Permit
• Uncleared Sidewalks in Snow Conditions
• Other

Depending on your choice, you will get further instructions and/or be asked for more information. For example, if you select “Wild Animal(s)”, you will be presented with a new form that asks for the location of the animal and type of animal. Finally, you’ll be asked to provide additional information, if necessary.

After completing the form, you get this reassuring message: "Your comments and concerns will be directed to the appropriate departments within the township. If necessary, a representative from the department will be sure to follow up with any questions they have based on your submission."

The website is responsive and adapts to a mobile format so it can be used on cell phones. But is there a better technology that can be used instead or in addition to this? How about a mobile app? What if the Township had a Twitter account and residents were able to send direct messages through Twitter to the township?

These are the sorts of questions that the Technology Committee is designed to answer should the Supervisors request it.

Posted on 30 May 2018, 10:15 - Category: Communication

My Efforts to Improve Communications with Residents

One of my goals as a Newtown Township Supervisor is to improve communications with Township residents. That is the main purpose of this blog. It’s good to know that my efforts have not gone unnoticed. Yesterday, for example, a member of the Nextdoor community website - where I often post information of interest to Newtown area residents - sent me a personal note: “I think your (sic) a terrific Supervisor to keep us informed!” That person made my day.

More important than posting to my website is the work I have done in conjunction with the Township staff, Technology Committee volunteers, and contractors to improve communications and access to public information. Some of the small steps toward my goal include the following.

1. I revised the mission statement of the Technology Committee to include “improve communications between the Township and its residents” (Resolution 2018-R-11, March 28, 2018).


2. Newtown Board of Supervisors (BOS) meeting agendas previously stated at the top: “Please Turn Off Cell Phones During Meeting”. I thought that would discourage residents from using their phones to record the meetings. Consequently, I requested that this phrase be replaced with “Please Silence Cell Phones During the Meeting.” My request was granted. This should apply to all agendas of public meetings. 


3. Related to that, at the March 14, 2018, BOS Meeting, I noted – and the Township solicitor confirmed - that residents can video record ALL public meetings, including Zoning Hearing Board meetings. Audio recordings are also allowed.


4. At the Mar 28, 2018, BOS meeting, I noted that there was an unnecessary delay in publishing minutes of meetings. The process involved approving minutes at the following meeting and then signing the approved minutes two weeks later at the next meeting – a total of more than four weeks after the original meeting. Now, if there are no changes, the approved minutes are signed and posted about two weeks after the meeting. If corrections need to be made, the Township administrative assistant posts a temporary copy of the minutes, which is then replaced with the corrected copy.


5. Related to that, very early on in my tenure in January, 2018, I requested that the posted minutes be converted to searchable PDF format. This was quickly implemented and every PDF version of minutes going back two years have been converted. Using a PDF reader, you can now search the minutes after downloading. You can also copy and paste sections of the minutes, which I do all the time. See for example the summaries of minutes posted to this blog.

Newtown BOS Website Video Streaming Improvement: No More Pixelation!

Now I can put another small “feather in my cap.” Finally, the quality of the streaming video of BOS meetings on the Township website has been improved and is now on a par with online videos of other townships. This is something I have been pushing for since taking office in meetings with the video contractor and the Township Manager and at BOS meetings. The "before and after" screen grabs below clearly show the improvement.

Another issue is indexing the video to allow viewers to jump to different sections of the video by clicking items on the agenda while playing the video. Lower Makefield Township (LMT), which uses the same streaming video vendor as does Newtown, includes this useful feature. LMT’s streaming video page showing the index to the video. Viewers can click on an item in the agenda such as “Contract for New Manager” and jump immediately to that portion of the video (see screen grab below). Since Newtown’s video page lacks this feature, it is very difficult for residents to view the sections of BOS meetings that they are most interested in seeing.

Now that Lower Makefield has stolen our Manager (click on “Contract for New Manager” here), I want Newtown to be competitive, not only in having great management but having great communications capabilities. The above accomplishments and suggestions are small steps in that direction, but there is still much to be accomplished. Stay tuned!

Posted on 25 May 2018, 10:37 - Category: Communication