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... the DTH archives of their opinion page don't go back that far, but when I was a columnist back in 2006 I recall writing a piece about it being shortsighted to kill the Tech Board without a plan to replace it. Though I was disappointed with that vote, I always assumed that they'd take the issue up again. But now it's been six years. Has anyone formally petitioned the council to reinstate a tech board in the interim? I can't recall a petition, though it's entirely possible I missed it if it did happen.
I remember suggesting last year the town accept online applications for boards and commissions. I figured, if we can do it for paid employee positions, we can certainly do it for the considerbly less complex application to be on a board.I think that (along with shorter terms) could make boards more accessible to students and young people who are more likely to utilize laptops and iphones than scanners and fax machines. After it being suggested the change would be made, and after 6 months of trying, and even sharing the html from another site that does online applications, I don't expect it to happen.If we want to catch up to Orange County at any point, I doubt they'd mind us basing our online applications after theirs:http://www.co.orange.nc.us/boards/application.asp I know George C and Ed Harrison mentioned it to Jennifer Phillips, and that right here on Orange Politics Ed mentioned that Jennifer said it was on the top of her to do list, but it wasn't a very straightforward thing.Other than blogging and social networking, I'm not anything close to someone who is amazing with computers and certainly not with coding, but when I interned in the Mayors office it was a very simple thing to create a form where you enter data into the fields and it's set to e-mail whoever you wanted it to e-mail. This was for the Meet the Mayor conecpt, but it was very much the same type of thing I envisioned for boards, and the same thing that Orange County seems to use. So maybe the hold up isn't on the tech side of things, but something else more bureaucratic.http://www.townofchapelhill.org/index.aspx?recordid=53&page=19
http://nationaljournal.com/magazine/how-the-internet-is-reshaping-us-and-our-government-20120607?page=1Response to questions about governments are mostly on pages 3 and 4.