City councilors said they’re happy with their two-month experiment using laptops for meetings instead of relying on several trees’ worth of office paper to ensure they have necessary information.
The city is preparing to order nine new $379 laptops for use by the council and Board of Finance, said Scott Smith, director of the city’s computers..
The Board of Education and the Bristol Housing Authority have already gone paperless.
At paperless meetings, officials wind up peering at laptops to see agendas, motions, minutes and the supporting documents for decisions they need to make.
So far, the council has borrowed the school board’s laptops for its sessions, but the city needs to get its own computers, councilors said.
Smith said he hopes to have them ready for use by the April City Council meeting. Click here for the full story.
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Copyright 2010. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com
14 comments:
Laptops for the (union) lap-dogs
LET ME GUESS PAID FOR BY US THE TAXPAYERS!
Maybe we go for seeing eye dogs too.
The savings on paper, copying and postage will more than pay for the laptops. Try opening your mind once in a while.
Just like we need new schools. We need lower taxes so we can stay in our homes. When will we see some cuts or layoffs.
I agree that laptops are the way to go, but at that price they can't be very nice.
Anyway, the convenience alone will pay for them tenfold.
1:01 - if they cost more, you would say that they were too expensive - repeat after me, functional, functional, functional.
If they can't take them home, how will they save on postage?
And, how will the councilors get to see the documentation before the meetings?
Does that mean that here is no documentation for historical purposes or for one to see that doesn't have a computer?
While they will not take the laptops home they will be emailed the docs to review on their home computers beforehand. Again, this will save on postage, paper, copy time, etc. Welcome to the 21st century.
4:10
I still have some concerns, but thanks for your response.
Maybe we should vote them all out?
Maybe with these new laptops the city council will be able to do
some math calculations and realize what Bristol taxpayers already know. We CANNOT afford 2 new schools right now.
The schools will be here we have a gutless council.
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