More Log On to City’s Electronic Bulletin Board : Thousand Oaks: Computer users can access municipal information and send messages to officials. The fledgling system is still basic but Councilwoman Elois Zeanah sees prospects for growth.

Thousand Oaks resident Roy Lewis eyed the apparently abandoned car parked on his street. He wanted the city to tow it away.

But every time he remembered its unsightly presence, it was either too early or too late in the day to call City Hall.

So Lewis turned on his computer, set his modem to dial and called into the Thousand Oaks Bulletin Board system. He dashed off a quick message to the city saying where the car was and how long it had been there.

Within 48 hours, the car was gone and Lewis had become a believer in the city’s new electronic bulletin board, an increasingly popular way to connect to City Hall by home or office computer.

The service came on-line in October, and now about 100 users a month access Thousand Oaks City Council and Planning Commission agendas and minutes, send messages to the city--even check bus schedules and find out how to get marriage licenses.

“It makes it so much easier to communicate,” Lewis said. “I don’t have to necessarily remember to give them a call during business hours. And if you’ve ever called the city receptionist, well, you know what that is like.”

His calls to City Hall are often transferred through an array of departments before he reaches the right one, he said.

“Now I just e-mail and let the system operator decide what to do with it,” Lewis said.

The bulletin board was the brainchild of Councilwoman Elois Zeanah, who is eager to see its functions expanded and updated. At Tuesday’s council meeting, she will ask city staff to arrange a public demonstration at an upcoming meeting.

“We need a demonstration and we need to market this,” Zeanah said. “There is so much we could do with this. The city needs to become computer literate.”

According to a 1994 survey, 65% of Thousand Oaks residents have computers at home and, of those, 50% are equipped with modems.

The fledgling electronic bulletin board--which cost the city about $5,000--is still relatively unsophisticated, said John Augustyn, the city staffer who set up the system. For one thing, residents cannot send their e-mail requests or comments to specific staffers or council people directly. Instead, they message a central system operator, who delivers a printed copy to the recipient. Zeanah wants to change that.

“I don’t like messages coming and going to a central source because that is just unnecessary,” Zeanah said. “That’s the Dark Ages. The point of the computer age is to eliminate all this red tape and extra steps.”

But Augustyn said the relatively low volume of mail--the city receives one or two messages a day--does not warrant establishing individual mailboxes for council members or staff.

It would be technically difficult as well, he said, because the main computer for the bulletin board and the computers used by staffers are part of separate systems.

“This way, if I’ve got some hacker, they can’t get into the city’s financial and payroll records,” Augustyn said. “There have to be some precautions.”

Zeanah said she wants to make the system more interactive, enabling the city to poll residents on issues.

“I could pose a question, then people would log on and they would say yes or no, then state their reasons,” she said. “Being interactive is really important for a community like this.”

She still has hopes for residents to be able to apply for permits, request inspections and pay city bills on-line.

Augustyn said the system does not have such capabilities yet, primarily because of limited resources.

“We don’t have a lot of time and money to devote to this,” he said, adding that expanding the system would cost the city more money. Zeanah, however, believes that the current software could handle additional functions.

Despite the bulletin board’s limitations, Augustyn said it offers quite a bit of information for the public.

“We just took anything that we had in print that we thought would be useful and put it in there,” Augustyn said.

From a main menu, residents can pick a number of options, including meeting agendas, minutes, information on when council members’ terms begin and end, and even a file on the history of the Conejo Valley.

Augustyn said staffers are considering including the city’s municipal code in the system, but he said the prospect of entering the 1,000-page document is daunting.

“We don’t want anybody to have to sit down and type that in,” he said. “But it seems like a nice idea.”

Resident Michael Richards, who logs on to the system about three times a week, said he would like to see the Thousand Oaks Library card catalogue on-line. Richards, who regularly uses computers at work and home, also finds it frustrating to be unable to send e-mail directly to staffers and council people.

“But I think it’s a great start,” he said.

Lewis would like to be able to access city ordinances through the bulletin board. School board agendas are also on his wish list, as well as more current council minutes.

But for an electronics junkie who by day trains people to use software and at night browses the Internet, the bulletin board is ideal.

“I’ll only go to council meetings if there is an issue that I feel is really hot and burning,” Lewis said. “I prefer disclosing my opinion from the comfort of my own PC.”