Montgomery Township Looking to Go Paperless

Supervisors could be going electronic with iPads to view their government meeting documents.

But will the township pay for them, or will supervisors?

Township technology manager Rich Grier began a discussion Sept. 12 with supervisors over the use of electronic boards, like iPads and Motorola Xooms, to replace paper documents.

He is expected to return before supervisors soon with quotes, pricing and a proposal, which would then call for a vote from supervisors.

Grier estimated that supervisors have used 2,833 pages of paper on average over three years between 2009 and 2011.

The estimated annual paper for five packets is 14,167 pages or 28 reams.

At $5.44 a ream, that is an estimated annual total of $154.13. With $480 estimated annual cost for administrative staff at one hour per meeting, and $960 in delivery costs at one hour per meeting, estimated annual costs total $1,594.13.

The average tablet cost is $550, totaling $2,750 for five electronic tablets.

Grier said he utilized several services of adjoining municipalities who are looking into moving toward electronic tablets when coming up with a proposal.

Supervisor Mike Fox said he has experience in using iPads in loan committee meetings at his job.

“The software they utilize makes viewing these packages an absolute delight,” he said. “It’s every bit as efficient as picking through these packages and writing. Everything written on the packet tonight can be on an iPad and it’s instantly accessible.”

Fox said he strongly supported the move to electronic tablets as “environmentally it’s the right way to go.”

Supervisor Joe Walsh agreed with Fox, but he didn’t want the township to purchase the electronic tablets.

Grier told supervisors one tablet would have a 21-month buyback.

“I’m not sure I’m committed to the township buying me an iPad,” Walsh said.

Grier said the township had to upgrade its copier for the sole purpose for getting packets out on a Friday evening to supervisors.

“If  you move to electronic distribution, instead of getting all that information on a Friday evening, we can give it to you as those items are completed,” Grier said. “We can even edit them in real time. It will give you more time to absorb a lot of the information.”

Fox said the payback and the environmental aspect are pluses in getting the electronic tablets.

“You’re talking about using 28 reams of paper for the five of us. That’s just silly,” Fox said, “especially because at the end of the night we all just recycle the packets, and take out one or two that you want to keep in your file. By and large, 90 percent of what is viewed tonight is going to be recycled tomorrow morning.”

Fox said the information would stay on your iPad and will be available as long as you want to keep an electronic file.

Township Manager Larry Gregan said supervisors could pay for an iPad as a reduction in their stipends.

He said it would be possible to do a joint purchase and then at some point, it would become an employee’s after a certain period of time.

“I would be something we would use,” Gregan said.

Fox asked about the possibility of buying the iPads from the COSTARS program.

Grier said the big vendors do offer COSTARS pricing, but they only offer 3G or 4G service.

“(That) is not what we’re looking to do. We didn’t want to have a monthly fee attached to these devices,” Grier said. “We wanted to go strictly wi-fi.”

Grier said a neighboring municipality had the 3G capability, but the vendor disabled the option and left the members to enable it themselves.

He said something like the Motorola Xoom would allow wi-fi capabilities with email, photos and video.

The iPad 2 is priced at $495, the Motorola Xoom is priced at $599 and the Samsung Galaxy is priced at $550.

“There are a lot of options out there,” Grier said.

Walsh said when he was on the North Penn School Board, information would be put on the district website and officials could access it from there. Anything that was confidential required a passcode.

Officials would still attend the meeting with a hardcopy, he said.

“I like the idea of having iPads, the idea of electronic,” he said. “If it was up to me, I would like my own. I would have a reservation of the township buying it.”

Supervisor Candyce Chimera agreed with Walsh.

Supervisor Jeff McDonnell said if documents were made available online, he would pick and choose what to print out. He said something like bills would be something he could look at and then approve at the meeting without printing them out.

Fox said supervisors would be surprised how quickly you get away from paper.

“This would be an image in front of you that you can scroll through the whole entire thing and leave marks and highlight, and it would stay on the device as long as you wanted,” he said.

Grier said the electronic tablets would also allow standardized documents across all platforms and email would be accessible both from an electronic tablet and on a home computer.

Walsh said he was sold, but the purchase was the issue.

Solicitor Frank Bartle said supervisors would be in better shape from a Right to Know standpoint owning the items themselves in terms of keeping information confidential.

“If the township owns it, I think it’s pretty clearly within the parameters of Right to Know discovery. It would fal into one of those classifications,” he said. “If it’s your own personal computer, I don’t think the decisions by the Office of Open Reocrds would have indicated that that’s public record.”

Supervisors are better off owning them themselves to maintain integrity and confidentiality of their own emails within their own computer.

“Remember, there’s a place where you send that email to, and if you copy the township, it’s right back in the mix again,” Bartle said.

Gregan said if the township owned them, then they would remain property of the township and would be returned to the township should a supervisor leave their post.

If there was a shared arrangement, then ownership would transfer at some point to the supervisor.

Gregan said the initial proposal was for the township to purchase them and retain ownership.

“You can withhold money or make a contribution back to the township,” said Bartle.

Grier said the iPads would have a life of about five to six years.

“We don’t need them. They would be nice to have,” said Chimera. “I don’t think it is something that the township needs to pay for.”

McDonnell said having the iPads would be a “luxury.”

“It’s actually not a luxury,” Fox said. “It’s the way we should be doing this. We shouldn’t be spending the money to create packets that are tossed at the end of every session. The amount and time of effort on behalf of the township to make them and deliver them and copy them, we need to have the Cadillac of copiers to do this efficiently. It doesn’t make sense when you have technology that can do it where payback is a year-and-a-half.”

McDonnell asked if there is an option, aside from an iPad, to just view packets.

Supervisors Chairman Robert Birch said McDonnell was talking about a Kindle, which “you would probably go blind reading. No one could sit and read it.”

Grier said there are newer tablets coming out with smaller screens and better resolution, but supervisors should spend the extra money to get a product that’s going to work.

“I’m all for it,” said Walsh. “It’s a great way to go. For the purchase of it, at least for me, take it out of the stipend. We will be using this thing beyond what we will be using it for. We will save paper, and save manpower, and I’m willing to pay for it myself."