In an effort to reduce paper use and save money, the Fort Worth City Council is using iPads for city meetings.
The average office in the United States uses 10,000 sheets of paper per year. Government agencies such as cities use even more, especially for things such as agendas.
A City Council agenda can be anything but a light read -- packets can number in the hundreds of pages.
"I guarantee, yeah, I'd get arm cramps just carrying the thing home at night studying up before council meetings," said Councilman Zim Zimmerman.
When the iPad became the "it" technological item to have, Zimmerman thought the city could use it to cut down lugging around binders of reports and agendas and increase efficiency.
"Everything we do here is done on a computer, so it can automatically be transferred to wherever you want to transfer it," Zimmerman said.
The transition to iPads and away from binders is also saving the city money, from the cost of paper to those who put the packets together.
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"There is significant savings there," Zimmerman said. "It's not a little bit of savings; it's significant."
Mayor Mike Moncrief has his own personal iPad but has hesitated to use his city one during meetings.
"I'm fearful that if I lose my place or the device goes down, then I'm sitting there running a meeting without the information," he said.
But the mayor and most of the council have embraced going paperless. While the public can still get a paper agenda, Zimmerman hopes to eye more documents on his iPad.
"It just makes sense," he said.
The council gets its weekly agenda emailed to its iPads. The public can sign up for the service as well at: http://feeds.fortworthtexas.gov/councilpacket
