By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – Kathy Montejo’s not one to miss an appointment.

For the past decade, she’s relied on a simple paper planner to keep track of her comings and goings – and it didn’t fail her.

“My husband would be using a Palm Pilot, clicking and clicking and saying, Wait a minute, wait a minute, I’m almost there,'” she said.

So Montejo, the Lewiston city clerk, was a little reluctant when the city’s computer services director delivered her brand-new Palm Pilot Z22 hand-held computer in its cheery, orange box.

It’s small, it beeps and she’s just getting used to writing with the wee plastic stylus.

“The size of the thing, it’s a huge difference for me,” she said. The screen on her Palm Pilot is smaller than a business card.

“I’m used to being able to see an entire month at a glance, now I can barely see one day,” she said.

Electronic calendars have been around for years, but not typically as tools to coordinate city government. In Lewiston, that has changed.

Montejo and 12 department directors and deputies started using Palm Pilots in their daily routines late last year. They joined another dozen – including City Administrator Jim Bennett – who already owned or used electronic planners.

Bennett uses a Hewlett Packard Ipaq, a faster machine with a bigger screen and more power.

“He’s a real power user,” said Peter Bassett, director of information services for the city. “But he really uses it for a lot of different things. We were more interested in the calendar function, for getting everyone on that.”

Staffers using electronic planners, like Palm Pilots or Palm PCs, can synchronize their schedules with the rest of the city easily, by just clicking a button.

That lets every user look at the schedule for everyone else in the system. It’s especially handy for setting up meetings, unless you have people who don’t use it.

Such as Montejo.

“If I was in a meeting, I’d always have my calendar with me,” she said. “But if someone needed to set something up and I wasn’t in my office, they had no way of knowing my schedule.”

It came to a head just before the November election. Montejo spent most of her time in the weeks before at retirement homes, helping to register voters. Bennett was back at the office one day, trying to set up a meeting with several directors, including Montejo. His assistant spent the better part of that day on the phone trying to find a time that would work.

“It could have been done in a minute with Groupwise,” Bennett said.

Two days and numerous phone calls and e-mails later, they had their meeting. Bennett decided it was time for something new.

Twice the time

Bassett picked the Z22 because it was inexpensive, $99 each. He purchased a dozen and delivered them to department heads who didn’t already have electronic planners.

“It’s perfect for what we wanted,” Bassett said. “It’s simple, pretty easy to learn and it does the calendaring very well. And that’s really all we wanted it for.”

It’s been a learning process, Montejo said. She hasn’t picked up the knack for writing on the thing yet. It’s still easier to use her paper calendar.

“I’m double-calendaring now,” she said. “I take both with me, and I write in the paper one and then update the electronic one. So I spend twice as much time double-checking and making sure I’ve got everything.”

As for Bennett, he’s investigating the next step up – A RIM BlackBerry. That’s a hand-sized gadget that combines the scheduling power of a Palm Pilot with a cell phone, pager, e-mail, instant text communications and Web browsing.

“I don’t get phone calls any more, maybe 15 or 20 per week,” Bennett said. “But I get easily 400 e-mails a week. So something that lets me keep up with my e-mails when I’m away from the office really helps.”