Thanks to a new system adopted by the Board of Commissioners, departments and elected officials will be able to submit agenda items and corresponding documents to the commissioners through an online process, improving the communication workflow.

As part of the new system, agendas are automatically published to an online site, including any updates made to an agenda from the time it is first published until the meeting. Citizens can subscribe to an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed of the published agendas and receive them using the RSS reader of their choice. Those who have a Microsoft Outlook email account can receive the agendas via email. Instructions for doing this can be found by going to allencounty.us/agenda. If you do not wish to subscribe to the RSS feed or do not want an email notification, you can still visit allencounty.us/agenda to see if an agenda has been posted.

Whether you get the email or go to the webpage, the agendas will include the ability for the public to see the corresponding documentation for items on the agenda prior to the meeting. This would include contracts, agreements, project descriptions – basically materials submitted to the commissioners for their review prior to the meeting. Minutes for the meetings will also be available.

The commissioners approved a three-year agreement with Granicus for the agenda management software system in August. The cost for the first year of the agreement is $6,500 with a seven percent increase in each of the next two years.