Huntley to try going paperless

Huntley is going paperless on a trial basis this week — at least when it comes to village board packets.

Board agendas and supporting documents are now available online, but officials will print documents out at a board member’s request.

“They kind of want you to avoid doing that,” Trustee Pam Fender said. “I think the whole point here is to go with less paper.”

Trustees also have the option of printing documents from their personal computers; unlike some other towns, Huntley is not furnishing trustees with laptop or tablet computers.

“We’ve talked about (going paper free) for a while but we’ve always thought about the expense of a laptop. When we found out we could go to the webpage and didn’t have to buy a laptop, I think it was something we were ready to do,” said Rita McMahon, the village clerk and executive assistant to the board of trustees.

Before the push to go paperless, trustees were receiving pre-assembled binders filled with information they needed in order to vote on issues.

At the end of every meeting, trustees turned in the binder, and took the next one that the staff already had prepared, Fender said. They ranged from 1 to 4 inches thick. They meet twice a month.

With the new system in place, village staff will review portions of the packet the village manager projects onto a large screen for both trustees and the audience to see. Each trustee also has a smaller screen to help them follow along, Trustee Ron Hahn said.

“I’ve got mine and I’ve looked through it and I think that system will work mighty fine, Hahn said.

The idea to try this initiative came from the staff, Fender said, adding that no board vote was required. Going paperless reduces the amount of waste and also saves the time the staff spends on putting the binders together, Hahn said. The village doesn’t track how much it costs to compile the paper packets, McMahon said.

Fender is eager to see how things go at Thursday’s board meeting — the first to take place since the shift — and she’s hopeful things go on without any glitches.

“I’ll probably just ask more stupid questions,” she joked.

The initiative only applies to the board packets, so there will be no impact on the public. They are available at huntley.il.us/gov/minutes_agendas.asp

Officials have not yet determined how long to run the paperless experiment with the board before going paper free in other areas of village government, McMahon said.

Huntley joins a growing number of government entities that have shifted away from paper board packets. They include Carpentersville, Wheeling, Hanover Park, Mundelein High School District 120 and Aptakisic-Tripp Elementary School District 102 in Buffalo Grove.