Alamosa City staff plan May 21 switch from Novus Agenda to Diligent Community

Alamosa City staff told council members they plan to replace the city’s Novus Agenda meeting software with the Diligent Community platform and go live on May 21.

The change matters because staff said Diligent Community will display upcoming meeting dates, searchable agendas and minutes dating back to 2013, allow members to receive subscription notifications, and provide a member-only view for draft agendas and internal attachments.

Staff member Holly demonstrated the platform during the meeting and walked council members through both the public and member experience. “We’re going to move completely to Diligent Community, May 21, I believe it is,” Holly said. She showed a public calendar, an archival document library and a member login that will surface internal attachments ahead of publication for users who log in.

Holly said staff migrated content from the city’s Novus Agenda account and that archived agendas and minutes are searchable within Diligent Community. She told the council that Novus has ended its support relationship and that Novus “already stopped supporting it in October” and will be “completely done for in October of this year,” language she used during the demonstration.

The platform includes a subscribe feature that sends an email when an agenda is published, a search tool staff said is improved over Novus, and member-only features such as annotations saved to a user’s profile and the ability to view draft agendas before public posting. Holly also demonstrated a request-to-speak function and a voting feature that staff said could be used later if the council wishes; staff proposed a possible work session for a mock vote exercise to test that capability.

Council members asked operational questions about user accounts and printing. In response, Holly said staff would set up member accounts and send password-reset emails; users could use either the ci.alamosa.co.us or alamosa.gov address formats, and staff had provisionally set accounts using @alamosa.gov. A council member asked whether printing would route to local City Hall printers; Holly said the agenda will print to whatever printer is configured on the accessing computer and that printing to City Hall machines could be arranged if desired.

Holly said the city plans to list the planning commission and other boards and commissions on the new platform in addition to city council items, and that the city website will be updated later this year to embed Diligent Community. She described the platform’s annual cost as “not too much more than Novus,” but did not provide a dollar amount during the meeting.

Next steps staff outlined include publishing upcoming agendas to Diligent Community shortly before the May 21 launch, completing department routing tests, and offering training or a work session if the council wants to trial the voting feature. Staff member Susanna will cover the city’s first live meeting on the platform, Holly said.