One price: $1,500 a year

Readable Town costs $1,500 a year per town, county or district, with one price for everyone and no tiers. It covers the monthly scan, the fixing of what you post in a normal month, the check by a person, and the Readable Record. It sits below the amount that sends most small governments to a formal bid.

A normal month is what a small town posts in the course of business: agendas, packets, minutes, notices and the forms that go with them. If one document runs far beyond that, such as a budget book or a master plan of several hundred pages, we tell you first and quote it. Nothing extra is billed without your written okay.

Readable Town is billed once a year, on net 30 terms, after you sign a one-year service agreement. We send a W-9 with the first invoice. We write to you 60 days before the year ends, so renewing, or not, is a decision you make with time to spare. There is no setup fee.

Most small governments do not need a formal bid for a purchase of $1,500, but thresholds are set locally, so check your own purchasing policy. As one example, a Colorado town ordinance lets a department director approve purchases up to $10,000 without bids. Our memo for your council has a blank for your threshold.

Yes. The price is $1,500 a year for any town, county or special district under 50,000 people, with the same service for each. If a county posts far more documents in a month than a town does, the normal-month rule applies: anything unusual is quoted first, and nothing is billed without a written okay.