Streamline Blog

Updated April 22, 2020 We have received many requests for help communicating our special district’s need to host public meetings remotely. We will continue to update this FAQ page with additional information over the coming weeks.

On Thursday, May 12, 2020, Governor Newsom issued an executive order giving our special districts greater flexibility to hold remote meetings during the current crisis. See item 11 of the executive order for details on temporary changes to the Brown Act. For special districts who have not hosted online meetings in the past, it may feel overwhelming to consider meeting remotely. Streamline does not provide that sort of technology, but we do use it on a regular basis and would be happy to help in any way we can. If you need to talk through options, feel free to reach out and we'll get back to you as quickly as we can. We're also hosting a conversation about this on Wednesday March 18th - it's part of a 6 week series on marketing for special districts, but you're welcome to sign up and just attend a single episode. The California Special Districts Association has developed a resources page that can provide more information, and includes links to pertinent state and federal resources where members can receive the most current information.

California legislators are pushing for additional transparency requirements for local government agencies. Their latest bid, Senate Bill 931, will require our districts to provide a copy of the full agenda packet via mail or email to anyone who requests it. Sounds like a great idea on the surface, doesn’t it? Of course, we agree that the public has the right to know what their elected officials are doing when it comes to official district business, but there are numerous problems with this proposed bill.

The Special District Leadership Foundation announced that it will be increasing the amount of their joint SDLF / Streamline scholarship pool for 2020. In the past, districts with annual operating revenues below $500,000 were able to utilize a scholarship to receive 15 months free services on the Streamline Web platform - as long as the district didn't already have a website. This year, the scholarship is also available to districts who have a website that isn't compliant with all of the California posting and formatting requirements (including being accessible to visitors with disabilities).

I know, I know … the majority of special districts aren’t spending money on billboard advertising. So why am I writing about billboards? Our online attention span is now hovering around 6 to 8 seconds, and that just happens to be the amount of time a driver has to process the information on a billboard while driving down the freeway. People have been studying the effectiveness of billboard advertising for much longer than the internet has been around - so if you’re trying to get the attention your district deserves, these takeaways can be really helpful.

[This is the first of a series of posts on the subject.] We often speak with folks at special districts who feel that “promoting” the district (whether via a website, social media, or other means) is unnecessary because - and this is a direct quote: “We aren’t competing with anyone.” Nothing could be further from the truth! Educating the public about the important work your district does is vital for a number of reasons.

Creating websites that are accessible to visitors with disabilities can be challenging, especially for developers building one-off / standalone sites. Most websites that were built even a year ago are likely not accessible, and many of the content management systems out there aren't accessible out-of-the-box, so to speak. If your website partner wasn't specifically told to build your website in an accessible way, it's likely that your site may have a few issues. Accessible websites aren't easy to build! If you're wondering if your site is accessible, you can get an idea by using an automated scanner. Automated testing won't catch every potential issue, but it will check the basics (and the most obvious), giving you an overall idea of how you're doing. (If you need 100% comprehensive testing, have it done by professionals using assistive devices.) So how do you test your site yourself?

We get so many questions about the new California special district website requirements going into effect Jan. 2020 that I thought a blog post was in order. Hopefully this helps make sense of the legal requirements on the horizon!

A bill that requires all independent special districts in California to have a website was signed into law by Governor Brown this month. State Sen. Mike McGuire’s SB 929 – the Special Districts Transparency Act – requires every independent special district in California to create and consistently maintain a website with specific and detailed information including meeting agendas, clear information on the district’s budget and expenditures, compensation reports, information on how to contact representatives of the district, and more.

There are a few formatting requirements that apply to local government agencies in California: Section 508 (for visitors with disabilities); AB 169 guidelines for anything considered “open data;” and AB 2257, which governs formatting and posting requirements for any agency’s main governing body’s agenda. In this article we’ll touch on the first two; to learn more about AB 2257 and home page agenda posting, check out this related article.