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Goldsboro to shift meeting agendas to CivicPlus; electronic voting to be phased in by March
Summary
City staff demonstrated a new CivicPlus board portal for council agendas and minutes; the council approved a phased rollout with agenda access in February and optional electronic voting launched as a pilot in March.
Goldsboro staff demonstrated a new CivicPlus board-portal system the council will use to publish meeting agendas, packets and minutes online and to give council members in-chamber or remote access to annotated agendas and documents.
Eden Snyder, an implementation consultant with CivicPlus, walked council members through logging in, downloading packets, annotating documents, viewing minutes, and using an electronic voting feature. The portal allows each council member to sign in, mark attendance and, when enabled by staff, receive a pop-up to cast an electronic vote (yes/no/abstain) for motions while the minutes-taker records results in real time.
During the demonstration council members asked about showing vote tallies in real time. Snyder said the system can display a meeting 'vote in progress' indicator while votes are being cast and can report final tallies on the meeting display after staff finalizes results. "It will list out anyone that voted yes," she said, noting that the system's current configuration only publicly displays final results once the clerk marks a motion passed or failed. The consultant said CivicPlus plans additional display features later in the year.
Council members discussed implementation timing and agreed to a two-step rollout: make the web-based agenda and packet portal available to council and the public for the February meeting and activate the electronic voting module as a pilot in March to allow time for training. Council members also requested that staff prepare a short training session and written guidance on use and public-record considerations; CivicPlus staff noted that members' annotations and notes could be subject to public-record requests.
City Clerk Laura and IT staff helped attendees set up login accounts during the retreat; staff said an embedded public-facing agenda page will be placed on the city website and that the city will continue to issue the standard agenda-notification email with a link to the online packet.
Ending: Council agreed to adopt CivicPlus for agenda management and to pilot electronic voting at the March meeting after a month of training and testing. Staff will provide training materials and written guidance about public-record implications of annotations and notes.
