Public notices, all in one spot
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We've published a number of stories and editorials on the practice of municipalities publishing public notices on their own websites as opposed to in the local newspaper.
Locally, Southern Columbia Area is the only district to have sought and received a waiver from the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) that allows such web postings. While PDE is handing out waivers, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association (PNA) argues that the practice shouldn't be allowed, noting that any legislation to change past practices has not been signed into law.
In addition to Southern Columbia, word is the Shamokin Area School District is considering making use of a PDE waiver to allow posting of notices on its website, too.
This isn't the venue for addressing the debate of where and how public notices should be published, but I wanted to pass along some information that PNA is promoting, namely the fact that public notices from newspapers statewide are available to the public free at http://pa.mypublicnotices.com.
At the site, users can do a search based on date, category, keyword or newspaper, or simply click on the name of a newspaper and see all of its latest public notices.
I clicked on The News-Item on Friday and at the top of the list was a legal notice regarding a meeting of the Northumberland County Career and Technology Center Operating Agency. Below that were two estate notices, and after that a legal notice for the upcoming Coal Township Board of Commissioners' meeting. There were dozens of others below that.
The site is extremely easy to navigate, and in a matter of minutes you can read legal notices published in newspapers throughout the state.
As school districts push to use the web as another means of communication - assuming they have a well-informed public in mind and not the opposite - they might consider promoting use of the PNA site while they continue to use the local newspaper. Probably never before was there such an up-to-date, comprehensive list of legal notices that is so easily and quickly accessible.
FIX ME: The late-night photograph of sheets bearing the words "FIX ME" draped over the wooden barricades around the collapsed culvert in Shamokin was the most talked about photo of the week. One employee missed the chance to get a photo of the sheets when he saw them early Monday morning and ran home to get his camera, only to find the sheets had been removed by the time he got back. But staff photojournalist Mike Staugaitis had come upon the unique public protest the night before and got the shot.
(Heintzelman, editor of The News-Item, writes "The Week In News" for each Saturday edition.)
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