While Apple started selling iPads to the public only 15 months ago, the 1.5-pound tablet computers seem well on their way toward ubiquity. This year, Alaska Airlines began issuing them to pilots to replace the 25 pounds of paper flight manuals they were required to carry on flights. Now, Cornelius, N.C., with a population of about 25,000, has stopped printing meeting agenda packages for town commissioners and has given them iPads instead. Anthony Roberts, the town manager (with Bence Hoyle, the police chief), discusses.

Q Why use iPads for your agendas?

A The short version is, unlike a lot of governments, we try to operate as much as a business as possible. At the end of the day, when you are printing agendas around 200 pages apiece and after the meeting they go into the recycling bin, you say, “Why are we doing it like this?” We have to run 20 agendas at 200 pages per agenda. That’s 4,000 pages just on that one, and that’s not including the time to put it together. And you usually don’t get it right the first time because everything changes. I would think it takes over eight hours per packet.

(Chief Hoyle cuts in) And the Police Department would actually deliver it to the board members to make sure they got it and had time to study it.

(Mr. Roberts continues) We see it as a money-saving measure. We see it as saving our taxpayers money.