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About this Website
History and Background
The Town of Middlesex website is brought to you by the Town Meeting Solutions Committee (TMSC). The website is a volunteer project and receives no funding from the town. The genesis of the website was the Middlesex Operator’s Manual that was also developed by the TMSC. The manual was published in 2003 by the work of well over 50 volunteers. However, it’s just not practical to expect that a 44 page manual can retain its accuracy over time, nor could we expect to print a yearly version of the manual. The original manual was printed at no cost to the town. Given this the obvious option was to create a town website.
The website went live in 2003 and has been maintained since then as a volunteer effort and has expanded beyond the original Operator’s Manual. For example, minutes from committees are on the website as are many other documents published since 2003. For example, the recently approved Zoning Regulations were added. Also any original information from the manual that has changed has been updated. At the start of 2007 a complete update of the format was completed and we hope gives the website a more professional look and feel.
Let it be known that the webmaster, Tim Murphy (me), is not a professional web designer or graphic designer or any of those particular artistic or technical skills that one might need to possess to do this well. The website is put together using a software package known as NetObjects Fusion. In addition, I use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, and some other odds and ends programs to support the website. All of these programs are personally purchased by me again at no cost to the town. If you haven’t figured it out yet none of this work has ever received any funding from the town and we hope to keep it that way. What expertise I have is my ability to take a software package and quickly learn how to use and apply it to solve a problem.
Purpose and Goal
The website provides another source of information for the citizens of Middlesex and visitors or others interested about our town. The website is not however an official means of communication for the town. If you look at other municipal websites you’ll find that this is almost universally true of all municipal websites. Our basic purpose and goal is to increase citizen knowledge and participation in Town government by making public information available through electronic access through this website.
Confidentiality
Vermont public law does not allow the posting of confidential information on publicly accessible websites. It is always our intent to follow these guidelines and should you suspect that we slipped up please send a note to the webmaster and if necessary we will correct the problem.
Spam Proofing this Website
As much as possible we have taken measures to prevent e-mails on this website from being harvested by e-mail spammers. As best I know this has been successful to date.
What is on the Website - What isn’t
Generally speaking anything of pertinence to the governance of the town or items of interest to the community is included.
What is included:
- Contact information of Town officials, but also of those that provide other services to the town (for example: who is running the Boy Scouts)
- Various document and forms produced by the town
- Town Meeting information and results
- Schedule of meeting dates, times, and location for all boards and commissions
- Minutes from the various committees
- Maps of the town
- Links to other useful websites
- and much more
What is not included:
- Links to websites of candidates for local, state, or federal offices
- Links to lobbyists or similar websites
- Links to personal websites (unless business related)
- Links to non-Middlesex business or services website (there are some exceptions)
- Chat rooms or bulletin boards
- and anything else deemed obscene or inappropriate by the Town of Middlesex
What about the Business and Services Directory?
This section of the website is a free service provided to the citizens of Middlesex to list their Middlesex business or service. Listings for nationally or internationally sized businesses is not permitted. For example, I work for a large multinational corporation. There is not an listing for them on this page, nor would they permit me to do so anyway. However, some of our citizens work for larger companies that are not based out of Middlesex, but provide a service that is of interest and needed by almost all typical citizens so we have made some exceptions. A good example of this is real estate or insurance. These are permitted on the website.
Disclaimer
The materials and information contained on or obtained from this Web site are distributed "as is" without warranties of any kind, either express or implied, including without limitation, warranties of title or implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Information contained on this Website, including information obtained from external links thereon, is provided without any representation of any kind as to accuracy of content and should be verified by the user. The Town of Middlesex is not responsible for any special, indirect, incidental or consequential damages that may arise from the use of, or the inability to use, the Website and/or the materials contained on the Website, whether the materials contained on the Website are provided by the Town of Middlesex, or by a third party. Data contained on the Website are subject to change without notice.
Copyright Policy
The website is Copyright protected, but not to the extent where the information on this website has been submitted to the Federal Government such as an author of a book might do. Information on this website can be used if you request and receive permission from the Town of Middlesex. Request this through the webmaster. On this website there are pictures that are credited to other individuals. The Town of Middlesex has permission to use these items, but cannot grant permission of use to other individuals or organizations. If you desire to use those items you’ll need to request permission from that individual.
Spam Proofing This Website
Anyone who operates a website knows that you need to provide a way for visitors to contact people by e-mail. Spammers have techniques to gather e-mail address from website, called e-mail harvesting. To combat this menace we are using techniques (Javascript snippets) that allow users to send e-mail to contacts on the website, but prevent spammers from harvesting e-mail addresses. Throughout this website you will see “Click Here to Send Me E-mail” text versus the actual e-mail address. When you click on this text it should open whatever program you use for e-mail. If when you click on this text your e-mail program doesn’t open it is most likely because your system isn’t configured to work with “mailto:” hyperlinks. We apologize for this inconvenience, but in the interest of protecting everybody else from spammers we had to use this system. If you want more details about these techniques do a web search on Spam-Proofing Your Website by Dan Thies.
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