North Lauderdale officials review Granicus VoteCast for electronic agendas and voting

City of North Lauderdale commissioners and staff spent the Feb. 11 workshop reviewing Granicus meeting-management software, including the VoteCast electronic voting module, and sought direction from the commission on whether to pursue the system further.

The discussion began with City Manager Sarges describing the proposed change: the Granicus suite would automate routing of agenda items through departments and move internal agenda review to Thursday before meetings so commissioners could give input before the agenda is published later that day. "Granicus is a software that will allow us to produce an agenda item for the commission," Sarges said. Staff also showed a roughly 22-minute vendor demonstration of VoteCast that illustrated minute-taking, a speaker queue, motion capture, and electronic voting.

Why it matters: staff said the system could streamline agenda preparation, improve timestamped minutes and records management, and increase resident engagement through digital public-comment features. Mitch Williams, the city's information technology director, said most of the Granicus products are already licensed to the city and that the VoteCast module is the primary missing piece. "The mayor requested that we look into a digital voting system," Williams said. The demonstration showed options to hide individual votes until all votes are cast or to display votes live, to include on-site displays for tallies, and to integrate public speakers via an eComment module.

Commissioners and the city attorney raised legal and operational questions. City Attorney Pamys cautioned about open-meeting rules, saying the commission needs to ensure the system will not permit "silent" voting that could run afoul of open-meeting requirements. Pamys said, "We need to carefully evaluate whether or not, if you were to be using it, it would have some impact on the open meeting in the sunshine requirement." Staff replied that the system can be configured so individual votes are not shown until the final tally is displayed on a chamber screen, and that the clerk would continue to announce votes as part of the official record.

Other issues discussed included compatibility with systems used by county or regional partners, speaker-timer settings (the vendor demo exempted elected officials from speaker timers), handling of consent-agenda items, and whether notes entered by board members in the iLegislate interface would become part of the public record. Mitch Williams flagged that the minute taker can always override electronic entries if a member's device fails or a technical issue arises.

No formal action or vote was taken at the workshop. Staff asked for direction on three points: whether the commission wants staff to pursue VoteCast further, whether staff should compare Granicus features and formatting to the county/MPO system for compatibility, and whether to proceed with a phased implementation and template for agenda formatting. Several commissioners expressed support for modernization and transparency while reserving judgment pending the legal review and compatibility checks.

Going forward, staff said they will return with cost estimates if expenses exceed the city manager's purchasing authority, a phased rollout plan, and answers on technical compatibility and public-records implications. If the commission directs staff to proceed and the expense requires it, a formal purchase request would return to the commission for approval.