Town planner Maureen O'Meara and webmaster Susanna M. Hubbs walk residents through Cape Elizabeth website tools

Maureen O'Meara, the Town of Cape Elizabeth planner, and Susanna Mizzell Hubbs, the town webmaster, led a public primer demonstrating how residents can use the town website to find meeting agendas and documents, watch recorded meetings and subscribe to topic alerts.

In the opening demonstration, O'Meara walked attendees through the meetings calendar and showed how council and board agendas are posted with hyperlinks to supporting materials, minutes and, when available, video recordings posted a few days after meetings. She credited Town Clerk Deb Lane for ensuring council agendas include linked documents and said better online access can reduce confusion around planning processes.

Susanna M. Hubbs demonstrated the site’s subscription and notification system (a Granicus sign-up), showing how visitors can enter an email and select categories such as “latest news,” community events, building permits or specific committee pages. Hubbs said prior Mailchimp subscribers were migrated to the new system and that every subscription email includes an unsubscribe link.

The presenters also highlighted two tools for checking town regulations and property information. Under the Government tab, the ordinances page provides the town's current ordinances (for example, the zoning ordinance, chapter 19) with effective dates and an amendments list. Under Services → Maps, the MapGeo GIS viewer overlays recent aerial photos with parcel boundaries and provides assessor record cards, including ownership and assessed values; O'Meara cautioned the map is updated annually and is not a substitute for a survey. For conservation parcels the site links to deed documents that indicate any deed restrictions (for example, “passive recreational activities only”).

O'Meara introduced the meetings dashboard as an alternate way to find committee meeting histories and agendas; she noted the dashboard failed to load during the live demo but described its functionality verbally. Hubbs explained that most committee pages include a single “email the committee” link that routes to the responsible staff member and distributes the message to the whole group, and she pointed to the Town Spotlight (formerly “hot topics”) area for ongoing projects such as the housing diversity study and the Cape Community Arena group.

Hubbs also reviewed CETV features: a live-stream option for watching current broadcasts and an on-demand archive with chapter markers so viewers can jump to specific portions of recorded meetings. She invited suggestions for additional website content and reminded residents they could email either her or O'Meara with requests.

The session included brief audience checks but no substantive public questions; presenters encouraged residents to explore the website at www.capeelizabeth.com and to subscribe to categories of interest.

The session concluded with an invitation to send suggestions by email; presenters said they would consider adding requested subscription options and content to improve public access and engagement.