Mike,

I want to compliment you on your efforts to offer modern day
communication alternatives for Newporters. Along those same lines I
offer the website of Blacksburg, VA --
http://www.bev.net/ecommunity/index.php -- as an
example of the kind of useful information that a community can share
electronically. I don't know how widely used the website is but
Blacksburg has been doing this for many years now. I know there are
many other examples across the country but Blacksburg was among the
first.

In an effort to collect email addresses, the city could promote the
benefit of immediacy of notification to residents. Future
notifications would occur using a list server (as with
KnowingNewport) to broadcast any appropriate notifications.