I hate ads as much as anyone (full disclosure, I use an ad blocker), but with all due respect, the reason there is no “practical” alternative to a service displaying ads is – someone has to pay for it. And before you say “I am paying or I am willing to pay”, it often costs more than you are willing to pay to run these services.
When you say it is “not practical” to go to the town hall, what you are really saying is “my time is valuable and I want someone else to expend their valuable time recording that information and disseminating it to me at low or no cost to me”. Believe me, I understand the desire. But if we were all honest, someone has to pay for this and capitalism has decided that this is the “best” way to do that.
Of course, but there are other ways to finance the news site. But ads are easy and lucrative, thus nobody (with exceptions) bothers to implement them. It's even worse: I pay for my local newspaper subscription and they still serve tracking ads.
When you say it is “not practical” to go to the town hall, what you are really saying is “my time is valuable and I want someone else to expend their valuable time recording that information and disseminating it to me at low or no cost to me”. Believe me, I understand the desire. But if we were all honest, someone has to pay for this and capitalism has decided that this is the “best” way to do that.