West Chester previews new agenda-management portal to centralize meeting documents and public access

Committee staff demonstrated a new agenda meeting management system on Tuesday that will consolidate agenda packets, attachments, meeting media and minutes into a single public portal and a separate board portal for staff and elected officials.

The system, shown to the Administration, Communication and Technology Committee, allows members of the public to download a single PDF “agenda packet,” click directly to attachments from the agenda view, search text within attachments and access meeting video and minutes for past meetings. "This is the public side... This is the most exciting part for me," a staff member said while walking the committee through the public view.

Why it matters: committee members and residents said the change should reduce confusion caused by multiple document repositories, make older agendas and attachments easier to find and streamline staff workflow for creating and approving agendas.

Staff demonstrated both the public-facing portal and a separate board portal intended as a personal workspace for committee members and department heads. The board portal includes private notes tied to a user’s account, the ability to download agendas and packets, and quick links to meeting media and minutes. Staff said past years of agenda items and attachments will be migrated into the new system so searches will return older meeting materials.

On timing and rollout, the presenting staff member said the original target to go live was October, with phased testing through the summer and broader staff adoption in late summer and fall. He said the team may be able to move the timeline up but emphasized training for staff and community users will follow before an official launch.

The presenter also said the committee-level and smaller boards and commissions can be included in the system; his goal is to expand beyond borough council to select committees and commissions by mid next year.

Public reaction at the meeting was positive. Lisa Kearns, a resident of West Biddle Street, told staff she found the public portal “light years ahead of where you are” and confirmed the portal displays well on mobile devices. Staff said personal notes in the board portal are not searchable by others, a feature CivicPlus described as private annotation similar to a paper notepad.

Staff said training materials and invitations to test accounts will be distributed to committee members and department heads prior to launch.

Ending: The committee requested additional testing and invited staff feedback; no formal vote or policy change was taken at the meeting.