Missing Meeting Minutes Found

I want to thank Middletown resident Carol Stiglin for following up on my behalf and finding out where the missing Middletown Township Committee Meetings Minutes are posted on the Township website. I have been extremely busy lately and haven't had much "free" time to follow-up on a number of issue that have been going on around me.

Ms. Stiglin is a Shadow Lake Village resident who can not easily make it out to township meetings, she is a leading proponent in having township meetings televised. She has gathered hundreds of signatures over the past months from residents that also wish to have meetings televised. She believes that by televising meetings, it would be a great benefit to those like herself, who cannot make it easily out to a township meeting to remain active and informed about what is happening with the local government.

With this in mind and after reading my post two weeks ago about Township Committee Meeting minutes after April 5th, not being posted online on the Township website, she decided to see for herself.

Ms. Stiglin stated to me that after nearly an hour online, going over the Township's website looking for updated meeting minutes all throughout the various webpages, she finally gave up and called the Clerk's office for help.

With help from the Clerk's office the minutes from the Township Committee meetings were finally located and the missing minutes after April 5th thru October have indeed been posted, just not where one would expect.

For those that wished to read the minutes of Township Committee meetings, they would first have to go to the home page of the Middletown Township website and scroll down to the tab for "Meetings". After doing so you would be brought to the webpage with a underlined header titled "Committee Meeting Information", it is there that you would find a tab that would have a list of previous Committee meetings dating back to December 2006 with the minutes attached.

Now, according to what those in the Clerk's office have informed Ms. Stiglin, if people would like to have access to more current meeting minutes (those after 4/6/10) the need to follow a different path to find them.

Now, once people come to the Township's homepage, those interested in reading meeting minutes must first have to scroll down and locate the tab for the Township Clerk on the lower left side of the website. Once you click on that tab you are brought o the Township Clerk's page.

At the top of the page there are 5 tabs that can be accessed that will lead people to Agendas, Minutes, Public Notices, Ordinances and Resolutions . It is under these new tabs and location where information that pertains to the Township Committee can now be accessed.

The reason for this change and all the confusion I have been told, is due to the continuing upgrades to the Township's website which is being overseen Committeewoman Brightbill, the process is taking longer than expected but hopefully will be completed soon.

My suggestion to Committeewoman Brightbill and those in the Clerk's office that are in charge of making the upgrades to the website, would be to please post a notice/disclaimer somewhere on the homepage of Middletown's website. This way, when members of the public go there for in search of information about the Township they would know that the website is in the process of upgrading and that certain information may have been moved to a new location or has not been added just yet. A note stating that a call to the Clerks office for help in finding information that is posted online would also be welcomed.