Jonesboro, AR – Jonesboro Right Now – The City of Jonesboro is in the process of changing its voting and agenda management systems, an effort it says is streamlining its work and is more user-friendly for the public.

In the past, the city has used Legistar to post the schedules of upcoming city meetings, agendas, minutes, documents, video recordings of past meetings, and more. It will be moving to CivicPlus to publish this, which Jonesboro’s city clerk April Leggett said will be more user-friendly for citizens.

In addition, the voting system implemented at public city meetings, such as city council and its associated committees, as well as Metropolitian Area Planning Commission (MAPC) and Board of Zoning Adjustments (BAZ), is being changed from SHURE to CivicPlus’s system.

“We had been looking at it for a couple of years. We weren’t getting the customer support that we needed,” Leggett said. “That decision wasn’t really made until this year, but we had been looking at it for several years, and we had also looked at it because we citizens comment that they didn’t like Legistar. It was too cumbersome to use, kind of outdated system that they didn’t like.”

Leggett said the change to CivicPlus was “budget neutral,” with the biggest expense coming from replacing the city’s microphones and tablets used to speak during meetings and cast votes. Money for the change came from the city’s Information Technology (IT) department budget, she said.

“There are more things that we have to do on the back end with [CivicPlus] than we had do with [Legistar], but that helps us to be more proficient in what we’re doing, help us to go back and look at things to make sure that they are correct,” Leggett said.

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While the city’s contract with Legistar does not end until the end of 2026, Leggett said the city had already started to move to CivicPlus in order to get city employees more comfortable with using it, as well as work out any kinks.

The city’s IT department is still working to migrate data from Legistar to CivicPlus, so any records of previous meetings are still there for the time being. Leggett estimated the data migration to be completed within one to two weeks. Documents for upcoming meetings are already being uploaded on CivicPlus.

“People can still go to Legistar and still search all our prior documents right now until they’re migrated over, and then the links will be changed to go to CivicPlus and they can do all their searches on CivicPlus,” she said.

As for the new city meeting voting system, Leggett said the SHURE system was aging and could no longer be supported. The change to the CivicPlus system not only allows for the voting system to be supported in the future, but it is also integrated directly into the CivicPlus agenda management system.

The change to CivicPlus also helps the city meet Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance.

“This adjustment will mean as updates occur to keep ahead of ADA visual contrast requirements and audio offerings on the city website, the agenda and legislation portal will evolve in unison,” the city’s chief administrative officer Brian Richardson told JRN.

As the city makes these changes, Leggett said if citizens had any questions about the new system or how to use it to contact her office.

The city clerk’s office can be reached at 870-935-0305, at cityclerk@jonesboroar.gov, and is on the first floor of the Jonesboro Municipal Center, located at 300 S. Church St. Its hours are Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

CivicPlus can be accessed through the city’s website, or directly here. Legistar can be accessed here.

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