Idea #415 -- Contact Information for Belmont Boards and Committees

Idea #415 – Contact Information for Belmont Boards and Committees

Report Status: Fully Reviewed

Researched by: Matthew Gasbarro

Original Idea as Submitted

Create group mailing lists and post email to town website for the various boards and committees so that residents can contact them more easily. Currently the board/committee pages just list members and offers no way to contact them.

Other ideas included in this report

None

Idea intent

This idea is to provide citizens communication access to members of a Belmont board or committee to raise their concerns or give feedback. Since the Town of Belmont website only lists names of its members and does not provide contact information, email nor phone number, citizens cannot communicate in a direct way.

Weighted Final Score: 37 (Financial Impact: 0, Operational Impact: 2, Time Scale: 4, Ease of Implementation: 5)

Background Information

A directory of approved contact information for elected officials can be found as a link on the Town Clerk website, or directly at https://www.belmont-ma.gov/town-clerk/pages/directory-of-elected-officials-public-contact-information. For non-elected committees, residents can obtain a contact list from the Town Clerk’s office or the Town Administrator’s office.

Currently, there are several boards and committees using a shared group email address either provided by the Town or a private mailbox.

Select Board (selectboard@belmont-ma.gov)

According to the Town Administration Office, Select Board members and Town Administration Office staff have access to the mailbox itself, but The TA Office filters out the junk mail and forwards the pertinent emails to the Select Board members \@belmont-ma.gov email addresses as well as any personal email addresses that they prefer.

School Committee (sc@belmont.k12.ma.us)

Emails to the School Committee’s group email automatically forwards to the School Committee members \@belmont-ma.gov email addresses.

Belmont Middle and High School Committee (bhs-bc@belmont-ma.gov)

According to the BMHSC Contact Us webpage, emails to the BMHSC’s group email are sent to the committee Chair. According to the Town Administration Office, emails to the BMHSC’s group email automatically forwards to committee members Bill Lovallo, Pat Brusch, John Phelan, and Patrice Garvin.

Belmont Human Rights Commission (belmont.hrc@gmail.com)

The committee uses a private Gmail mailbox.

Using a Town provided group email address with all committee members having access poses a security risk since Belmont hosts its email on the Town’s network and the Information Technology director would need to be able to guarantee that the network is not compromised. Those with direct access to email boxes can delete and forward any email from that box and, depending on the permission level, those with access to the email box can send emails from that box. However, with the @belmont-ma.gov email addresses, all emails are archived as soon as it clears the Town firewall and cannot be deleted or altered from the archive. A group email address is also an opportunity to violate the Open Meeting Law forbidding sharing of emails with a quorum of the committee. Doing so would constitute as deliberation on a topic, in which such deliberation would not be open to public view. Furthermore, there is an additional task of updating the shared mailbox access as committee’s turnover.

While committees can use a private (Gmail, etc.) group email address to serve the same purpose, it places the burden for public record keeping onto the committee. Although this is no different than committee members using personal email addresses for committee correspondence, the private group mailbox requires committees to self-manage the mailbox so that new members have access and previous members have access revoked.

The most feasible approach is for a sole member of a committee to have access to its official Town-owned email address. This person would share the email message content with fellow members in accordance with Open Meeting Law. The committee could choose this contact person (wouldn’t have to be the chair).

Recommendations

While this idea is not revenue producing or mitigating a Town cost, providing committee member contact information achieves the goal of greater transparency for the residents of Belmont.

Next Steps

Discuss with Town Administration Office and Information Technology department on establishing a process for creating a shared mailbox for each board and committee, either with all members having access or a single member depending on the logistics of mailbox upkeep.
Post the Town Clerk’s contact list for non-elected committees on the appropriate committee’s website.
The Town Clerk will post appropriate training and guidance.
Post an aggregated Town Clerk’s contact list for all non-elected committees as a directory on the Town Clerk’s website similar to Directory of Elected Officials - Public Contact Information.