FALMOUTH - The town council, grappling with the volume and content of e-mails by and between councilors, drafted what is considered to be Maine's first council e-mail use policy.

The policy, unanimously enacted in November, was crafted after the town received a freedom of information request from the Forecaster newspapers for access to council members' e-mail communications, many of which were stored on personal e-mail accounts, according to Council Chairwoman Cathy Breem.

She said it was cumbersome to respond to the FOI request "when your town business e-mail is mixed in with your personal e-mail," so Town Manager Nathan Poore suggested he establish town e-mail accounts for each councilor to use for town business from that point on.

"It creates this very bright line between where you do your work and where you don't do your work," Breem said, and "ironically, it's much less cumbersome. I love it."

The volume of e-mail communication dropped off considerably after the town enacted its policy, which prohibits three or more members of any board or committee from using e-mail for "deliberation, discussion or for voting on matters properly confined to public meetings."

The policy allows the use of e-mail for non-substantive communications, such as scheduling meetings, passing along information and developing agendas for future meetings.

According to Breem, the FOI request that prompted the creation of this policy was seeking e-mail communications regarding wetlands issues the town was grappling with, and "there was a lot of back and forth about it both among the council and constituents."

As the town collected councilors' e-mails to comply with the request, Poore and others realized "there's really a lot of conversations taking place here, and that's probably not a good thing," Breem said.

The council made a decision to "avoid doing any sort of deliberation online. Anything that looks or feels or smells like a public meeting should not be happening in cyberspace," Breem said, and the town's policy is firm on this point.

Since enacting the policy, Breem said councilors actually have much less work to do because they don't engage in e-mail discussions, other than with constituents, and rely on their accounts for logistics and to pass along information.

"It feels a little bit like when you free yourself from an addiction. We're all so addicted to" e-mail, Breem said, and the town's policy "stopped the madness. It's very liberating."

To view the policy, go to: www.town.falmouth.me.us