Dayton Council backs low-cost fixes for bulky agenda packets, plans preview draft and SharePoint pilot

A Dayton City staff member told the council at its work session that a recent 30-day trial of agenda software had expired and the city would not purchase the $2,500 subscription. Instead, staff proposed making the city agenda the visible document and hosting large staff reports and attachments in a SharePoint folder that the agenda would link to, reducing bulky packet downloads.

Council members raised concerns about file sizes and legal retention. Staff said current website uploads are limited to 20 megabytes, older packets are retained on internal storage per state retention rules, and the SharePoint approach would use a dedicated 1-terabyte cloud store for recent documents while staff would retrieve archived materials on request.

Members discussed several lower-cost alternatives before buying new software: sending an earlier draft agenda by email (Wednesday or earlier), providing a shared read-only preview link (Teams/SharePoint), or placing placeholder hyperlinks on a preliminary agenda that staff would populate as materials arrive. Several council members favored the quick email/draft-preview option as an immediate fix; staff said they could implement that nearly right away.

Council also supported a phased pilot of linked documents. Staff will test a SharePoint/linked-attachment workflow with a small set of heavy-users (suggested by council) to confirm usability before wider rollout. The pilot is intended to identify navigation or permission issues and smooth staff processes for bookmarking or organizing repeated items such as LC Stevens Park and planning-commission materials.

No formal motion or vote was taken at the work session; staff said the items discussed would be placed on the next council meeting agenda for formal approval as needed.