Branson Communications Manager Melody Pettit provided information to Ozarks DynaCom’s News Department Wednesday about a grant Branson obtained from Missouri’s Local Records Grant Program allowing for the purchase a web portal.
Pettit’s response to Ozarks DynaCom’s request for information said that the grant amount was $8,895. The grant application was submitted on Feb. 25, 2021; it was awarded for the grant cycle of July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. Acting Branson City Administrator and City Clerk Lisa Westfall commented on the new web portal feature in a press release.
“We are always looking at ways to increase transparency and make it easier for our residents and community to find information. We are excited about this new feature and hope our residents enjoy having easy access to these documents,” Westfall said.
The portal is under the government tab of the website and according to the press release “allows all City Ordinances and Resolutions to be faced out for the public to access.” The press release also states that the documents are scanned with Optical Character Recognition; this makes the documents “vastly searchable.”
The new feature’s search capability allows “users to type in key words that search the City Ordinances and Resolutions from the first ordinance in 1913 to current.” The reason this matters: now anyone can locate contract approvals along with budget and code amendments using the website.