The Town of Arlington is committed to open government and continually works toward improving transparency, availability, and accessibility of public information. On January 26, 2026, the Town took a big step toward unifying all digital public meeting documents to a new online system. On this day all boards and committees will post their agendas and minutes to the new Agendas and Minutes portal.
“A well-informed community provides better feedback to Town leaders, which supports and encourages local democracy,” said Arlington Town Manager, Jim Feeney. “The Town generates thousands of meeting documents annually. Currently those documents live in multiple places online. Unifying them into one system and updating our internal workflows to improve ADA compliance improves public access for all.”
Benefits of the new Agendas and Minutes portal include:
- A convenient, user-friendly webpage that allows the public to quickly find upcoming meetings of interest and related documents.
- Improved key-word search that allows searches across multiple committees with helpful previews of search results.
- Clear time/date stamp when Agendas are published.
- New Agenda and Minutes templates that contribute to staff efficiency, ADA compliance, and to the public’s understanding of public meeting terminology and protocols.
Leading up to the launch of the new Agendas and Minutes portal and in response to the DOJ final rule regarding accessibility of web content for state and local governments, the Town’s Communications team created new templates and trained over 70 staff and committee volunteers in the creation of Agendas and Minutes compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
“I’m overwhelmed by the willingness of staff and community members to adopt new practices so these important documents can be accessible to everyone,” said Joan Roman, Arlington’s Public Information Officer. “I want to recognize the efforts of our Communications Coordinator, Marissa Martin, for developing and implementing easy-to-understand ADA training and providing ongoing support as we all improve our ADA compliance knowledge."
The next step for the Town will be migrating all past digital meeting documents (agendas and minutes) to the new platform. In the coming months the Town will work with its vendor, Granicus, to complete this task by the end of 2026.
The new Agendas and Minutes portal is powered by Granicus, the same vendor that powers the Town’s website and the Request/Answer Center. Learn more about Granicus.
