For New York villages and special districts · Long Island first
The village website New York now requires, run for you.
General Municipal Law 300 requires every municipality of 1,500 or more residents to keep a .gov website with its meeting notices, agendas, minutes, code, budget and financial reports. Public Desk is one subscription that publishes all of it on the legal clock, and drafts the minutes from the recording of the meeting.
The law
General Municipal Law 300 is in force. Most small villages are not complying.
- Who
- Every municipal corporation with 1,500 or more residents at the last census: villages, towns, cities and counties. Below 1,500, "to the extent practicable." Fire and water districts must post budgets and notices on their site if they have one.
- What
- An official website on a .gov domain, kept current, posting notices of elections, hearings and meetings; agendas and minutes; the code and local laws; and the budget, annual financial report, latest audit and multiyear plan.
- When
- Binding since February 28, 2026. The Open Meetings Law adds the clocks: notice 72 hours before a meeting, records to be discussed 24 hours before, minutes within two weeks. Accessibility to WCAG 2.1 AA is due April 26, 2028.
- How it is bought
- Software as a service is a purchase contract under General Municipal Law 103, so the competitive-bid trigger is a $20,000 twelve-month aggregate. Below that line the village’s own procurement policy applies, usually written quotes, which we supply.
Chapter 609 of the Laws of 2024, amended by Chapter 97 of 2025, read with the Committee on Open Government’s memorandum of March 3, 2025. Section by section, with the statute links.
What you get
Everything the statute lists, from one login, on one contract.
A village today pays two or three vendors for a website, an agenda tool and code hosting. None of them draft the minutes, and none of them watch the clock.
Notices and agendas on the clock
The meeting notice goes out 72 hours ahead and the agenda and packet 24 hours ahead, to the site and to the e-mail list. You add the items and attachments; the agenda assembles itself in your format, with the newspaper copy ready for the official paper where the statute still requires it.
The meeting, recorded
A phone on the table, a USB microphone, or the Zoom or YouTube stream the village already uses. The recording uploads on its own when the meeting ends.
Draft minutes from the recording
A transcript within hours and a draft of the minutes in the village’s own format, marked draft, for the clerk to edit. The board adopts minutes. The software never publishes them as final on its own.
Published inside the two-week deadline
Minutes, the recording and the transcript posted to the .gov site beside the agendas, notices, code, budget, annual financial report and audit that the law lists. Recordings within five business days where the board allows videoconferencing.
FOIL requests with the clocks built in
A request form and inbox, a queue for the records access officer, the five-business-day acknowledgment and twenty-day production deadlines, the fee schedule and the appeal log.
Payments on a hosted page
Water, permits, dog licenses, parking. 2.65% paid by the payer with a $3 minimum, $1.50 for an e-check, nothing charged to the village. Every tax-type payment gets the confirmation number, date and time that General Municipal Law 5-b requires, and your treasurer signs PCI SAQ A, not a longer form.
Your code, on your site
The village’s local laws and code hosted and searchable on the same site, updated as your codifier issues supplements. Code text is a public edict and belongs to the village, not to a vendor.
A .gov domain in the village’s name
The village registers its .gov through CISA at no charge; we do the application with the clerk and host at it. A vendor cannot hold a .gov domain, and should not.
Your records, exportable any day
Every agenda, minute, recording, request and payment record exports as plain files with one click. No fee, no ticket, no thirty-day window.
The clerk’s week
A Tuesday board meeting, on the statutory clock.
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Friday, 6 pm
Notice posted
72 hours before the meeting: notice of time, place and any videoconference location goes to the site, the media list and the subscribers. Public Officers Law 104.
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Monday, 6 pm
Agenda and packet posted
24 hours before: the agenda with every proposed resolution, local law and record to be discussed. Public Officers Law 103(e).
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Tuesday, 7 pm
The meeting
Recorded from the room or the stream. Nothing for the clerk to press.
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Wednesday, 9 am
Transcript and draft minutes
The transcript and a draft of the minutes in the village’s format are waiting, marked draft. The clerk edits.
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Within two weeks
Minutes posted
Draft minutes posted marked unapproved, as the Committee on Open Government reads Public Officers Law 106. Adopted minutes replace them after the next meeting.
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Within five business days
Recording posted
Where the board has adopted videoconferencing procedures, the recording is posted and kept five years. Public Officers Law 103-a.
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Any day
FOIL requests
Acknowledged within five business days, produced within twenty, or given a date certain. Public Officers Law 89(3).
Newspaper publication of legal notices is still mandatory in New York. The notice feature produces the newspaper copy, the signboard copy and the website posting from one screen. It does not replace the paper.
How it works
You see it before you pay for it.
01
We build it first
From the agendas, minutes, budget, local laws and notices the village already publishes, we build your new site and send the mayor and clerk a private link. It is marked as a demo, carries no seal, and comes down the day you ask.
02
You say yes
One annual contract, under the bid line, with a subject-to-appropriation clause. We register the .gov with the clerk, move the domain, and post the first three months alongside her.
03
The week runs itself
The clerk adds agenda items and edits the draft minutes. The clocks, the postings, the recording and the FOIL queue are handled. When you need something we have not built, you ask us.
Pricing
One price, under the bid line, with nothing added later.
Village or town
$16,000 a year
Everything above: the .gov site, notices, agendas and packets, meeting recording, transcript and draft minutes, publishing on the deadlines, FOIL intake, payments, the hosted code, accessibility, and the people who post alongside your clerk for the first three months.
- Below the $20,000 twelve-month aggregate that triggers competitive bidding under General Municipal Law 103. We supply the written comparison your procurement policy asks for.
- No setup fee. No annual increase written into the contract. Cancel on thirty days’ notice and keep everything.
- A subject-to-appropriation clause, so a multi-year term needs no special approval.
- Card fees are paid by the payer at the market rate, 2.65% with a $3 minimum, and go to the processor, not to us.
Fire, water, library or sanitation district
$2,400 a year
The district site, commissioners’ notices, agendas and minutes, the budget-hearing notice and proposed budget posted as Town Law 181 requires, the annual financial report and audit, and FOIL intake. Payments optional.
Clears most district procurement policies with a phone call.
For comparison: on Long Island a village website alone runs $7,900 a year on CivicPlus, code hosting $1,000 to $1,300 on eCode360, and an agenda tool $5,700 and up, with 5 to 10 percent yearly increases and a fee to export your own records. Figures are from published contracts and are cited in the law.
Where we start
Long Island first. Then the rest of the state.
- 96 villages, 13 towns
- in Nassau and Suffolk, every official site inventoried by direct fetch in September 2026.
- 64 of 96 villages
- on an agency WordPress build, a do-it-yourself builder, or hand-written HTML. Ten of thirteen towns are on CivicPlus. Nobody has the villages.
- 16 villages
- publish no minutes online at all or are six months or more behind.
- 36 villages
- take no online payment for anything.
- At least 4 villages
- over 1,500 residents are not on a .gov domain and are out of compliance today.
Upstate, about one village in four sampled has no site, a dead domain, or a live site with no minutes, and 34 of 65 fire districts sampled have no district site at all. Fire district budget hearings fall in the third week of October; the proposed budget must be posted on the district site if one exists.
What your treasurer will ask for
The paperwork comes with the product.
- A W-9 and a one-page contract with a subject-to-appropriation clause
- Our written information security policy
- Answers to the State Comptroller’s IT governance checklist
- Payments on a hosted page, so PCI scope is SAQ A
- WCAG 2.1 AA, ahead of the April 26, 2028 deadline
- A one-click export of every record, at any time
Details, including how we handle a security incident so the village can meet its own 72-hour reporting duty, are on the security page.
Talk to us
Tell us your village or district. We will build the site and send you the link.
Built from the records you already publish, marked as a demo, carrying no seal, taking no payments and no requests, and taken down the day you ask. Judge it the way a resident would.