Port Orange, FL Chooses CivicPlus® for Agenda and Meeting Management, with Integrated Online Code Hosting and a Website

The City of Port Orange, FL, maintains a population of over 57,000 residents. With a Clerk Department of four staff members, a City Council of four plus the Mayor, 18 boards and committees, and over 1,000 meetings per year, the City of Port Orange has significant amounts of agendas, meeting minutes, and transparency documents to manage. The City needed an agenda and meeting management solution that could be easily adopted by staff, that would integrate with its existing systems, and that was affordable. To fulfill its needs, the City chose BoardSync, now CivicPlus Agenda and Meeting Management.

Before CivicPlus

Robin Fenwick, City of Port Orange City Clerk, and her team used to spend hours each week compiling the necessary meeting packets, chasing down paperwork that needed to be signed, and handling other aspects of the agenda management process. Fenwick estimates that handling the meeting process required eight or more hours per week—time that could have been better spent serving the public rather than standing in front of the copy machine or working on other mundane document management tasks.

The Solution

Fenwick quickly recognized the need for a meeting management system to automate the time-consuming tasks of routine agenda management. After reviewing the various agenda management platforms available, Fenwick chose CivicPlus. She found the platform to be more affordable than others without suffering any compromises.

In October 2014, Fenwick decided to use CivicPlus to manage the process for one meeting. By February 2015, all Port Orange’s meetings were being managed through the CivicPlus Agenda and Meeting Management system.

Saving Eight Hours of Labor Per Week

After the successful migration to CivicPlus, all the City’s staff members quickly took to the new platform because the CivicPlus Agenda and Meeting Management system proved to be extremely easy to use, and the benefits were immediate and obvious. Fenwick and her staff ended up saving eight-plus hours of labor per week and were able to facilitate documents being signed and meeting agendas being completed in a timelier fashion. Such efficiencies allowed the Port Orange Clerk’s Department to focus on better serving residents and other strategic initiatives.

In addition:

• The CivicPlus Agenda and Meeting Management system saved Port Orange significant dollars compared to the other agenda management providers available
• All staff members quickly learned and adopted the easy-to-use CivicPlus Agenda and Meeting Management system
• Remote system access improved workflows and reviews and allowed tasks to be completed more quickly
• Agendas were posted an average of six hours earlier, giving members more time to prepare for meetings

Agenda and Meeting Management, Website, and Online Code Hosting Integration

In 2021, CivicPlus acquired Municode. Today, Municode Codification and its Online Code Hosting solution are part of our CivicPlus CIvic Experience Platform. CivicPlus is the only government technology company providing the option to integrate your website with your agenda and meeting management software and online code hosting solution. The web integration connects website search results from both Agenda & Meetings and the Online Code of Ordinances. Additionally, the integration with Municode Codification allows staff to send ordinances straight from the Agenda and Meeting Management interface to the Municode legal team and to the organization’s online code of ordinances faster than ever before. When the ordinance is posted online, it also contains a link to the associated meeting content so users can find the detail around the passing of the ordinance.

Before using the integration, Fenwick would have to remember to go back in and email new or amended ordinances to Municode via email. Now, when meetings are over, as she is creating meeting minutes, she can simply click on the attachments and click Send to Municode rather than having that process separated.

“I like this integration because it has removed steps in my process as part of my day-to-day,” said Fenwick. “I don’t have to remember to do this as a separate task—and now myself, staff, the planning department, and the public can find the ordinances instantaneously as they get posted right on the homepage of our online code of ordinances, faster than before”

For more information on Agenda and Meeting Management from CivicPlus, or to see this powerful agenda and meeting management system in action, take a self-guided demo of our software.