Students at Mercer’s Reg Murphy Center for Collaborative Journalism reviewed nine local agencies on their compliance with state law as well as any extras they provided in making their work as transparent and accessible to the public as possible. You can read about the other agencies and see their rankings here.

The Macon Water Authority website is https://maconwater.org/

Does the website list out its key staff, governing board or other leadership and how to contact them? The Macon Water Authority has both Staff Members and a Board Council contact information. The main phone number is 478-633-8341 and President & Executive Director Ron Shipman can be reached at [email protected] and Board Chairman Gary Bechtel [email protected]

Does the agency have a public information officer? If so, is the name and contact information listed? They do not have a public information officer. They have a Vice President of Human Resources which is the closest we could find.

Does the website have information on meeting announcements/meeting dates & times? If so, where is this posted? Yes, information on meeting announcements/meeting dates and times are listed under the “Public Information” tab at the top of the website, and then under “Publications.”

Does the website have meeting agendas? Yes under the “Publications” tab there is a link to “Publications and Board Documents” that goes to the minutes and agendas: https://go.boarddocs.com/ga/mwa/Board.nsf/Public

Does the website have approved meeting minutes? They have approved minutes, it is in the same location as the meeting agendas.

Does the agency provide a way for the public to watch its meetings virtually as they happen? And/or does the agency have recordings of its meetings on the website or linked from the website? They livestream their meetings on their Facebook account and the recordings stay posted after the meeting ends.

Does the agency have social media platforms and if so, which ones? The only social media platform The Macon Water Authority uses is Facebook. They post about emergency news (water line bursting), general tips, and streams from their meetings. https://www.facebook.com/MaconWaterAuthority

Does the agency provide a way for the public to make open records requests? hey do not provide a way for the public to make an open records request through the website.

Please note any other information you found on the website that would be helpful to members of the public who would want to keep up with this agency’s business. On their website, people can make payments towards their water bills and also contact their landlords. One thing of note is the website does not work on all browsers. Some information would load in Safari but not in Chrome.

Anything else to note? If given a letter grade, we would give it a B-/C+ for the following reasons. On top of the difficulty of navigating their website, they did not have an easily accessible open records request form, as they did not have one at all. On certain browsers such as Firefox and Safari, the website can be navigated easily, but not when using Chrome, as they have cut off the top section of their website in some instances, resulting in not having access to the ease of access bar at the top of the site. This agency has technically met all of the requirements made by the law, however, it barely scrapes by.

Transparency Grade: Excellent. This agency did have all of the information linked to their website; however, they were difficult to find and we had to do a Google Search to find the meeting times and agendas.

Online Accessibility Grade Average. This agency was active on their Facebook page, live streaming and posting their video recordings whenever they had a meeting. They also posted the contact information for not only their staff but for their Board of Trustees. The minutes and agendas were again hard to find online therefore they received the Average grade.

Transparency Grading

Excellent: Agency goes above what the law requires for just posting its meeting times and also posted agendas and minutes.

Satisfactory: Agency had its meeting times posted on its website as required by law.

Unsatisfactory: Agency did not have its meeting times and/or agendas posted on its website as required by law.

Online Accessibility Grading

Superior: Agency provided contact information for leadership, audio or video recordings of meetings and minutes from its meetings. Agency also used social media platforms to share out information of interest to the public.

Average: Agency provided contact information for leadership and was active on social media but did not have audio or video recordings of meetings and/or minutes from its meetings posted online.

Below Average: Agency didn’t provide contact information for leadership and didn’t regularly post on social media. Agency also did not have audio or video recordings of meetings or minutes from its meetings available online.