Township of Eastampton, NJ

Background

Kim-Marie White plays a dual role in the government of Eastampton: As Township Manager, she oversees day-to-day government operations for their approximately 6,000 residents and 42 staffers, and as the Municipal Clerk, she makes sure the government is as transparent as possible.

Before NextRequest, public records requests in Eastampton were received via fax or email, logged, and forwarded to the correct department by hand. The departments would then pull the correct file folders, and deliver them to Kim-Marie, often missing deadline dates. Then, Kim-Marie and her deputy would have to locate the record within each folder and process the rest of each request themselves before moving on to the next one. This process hadn’t changed much in the 18 years since the Open Public Records Request Act was put into place in New Jersey, until Eastampton adopted NextRequest.

Streamlining with NextRequest

After seeing a demo at the International Institute of Municipal Clerks conference in Norfolk, VA, Kim-Marie and the Township of Eastampton made the decision to swap to NextRequest. They launched their portal on April 8, 2019, and it’s been a welcome change. “I love the redaction tool, and visualizing everything in the dashboard…. [it’s] very easy to use and I like to view everything in one place,” says White. In a small town with a small staff, NextRequest has greatly increased efficiency and freed up time for other tasks.