How this tiny New Jersey borough is elevating its OPRA process

Background

The Borough of Belmar, New Jersey is a single one-square mile with a beach, marina, and downtown. Nestled on the popular Jersey Shore and roughly equidistant from Philadelphia and New York City, Belmar triples in size in the summer months as visitors flock to the beach.

The Borough of Belmar’s Municipal Clerk, April Claudio, has many titles. Five in fact! To help her keep track of her multiple roles and responsibilities, April brought on NextRequest to manage the borough’s record requests. She and her team had been searching for a record request management solution for roughly 2+ years prior to bringing NextRequest onboard.

Balancing Act

April is a shining example of how the multitudes of clerks out there who are balancing multiple roles have found tools to help streamline their workflows. Moving to NextRequest allowed April and her team to move away from manually tracking and processing the roughly 200 OPRA paper requests they received a year to a more automated workflow.

Keeping Coordinated

April can now more easily coordinate with the other departments in Belmar as well.The Belmar Administration, Finance, Police, and Department of Public Works departments all use NextRequest help track requests, get reminders to and from departments, and to redact documents.