A Suggestion for the creation of an Official Town Website
Update: March, 2008
Email addresses have been assigned to Town Hall employees and should be in use soon. The Assessors page is up and running (Thanks to Dave Baird). This has already been of great use to the folks that need to acess property information.
Update: February, 2008
Finally the Town of Clinton has a domain name and the outline of a website. Thanks to Mike Ward for his perseverance and work in getting us this far. I hope all town departments get their information to Mike for inclusion in this site, it's the only way it will be of value to our citizens.
Joe
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Background .
As of 2005, 66% of the cities and towns in Massachusetts had municipal websites setup to address the needs of their citizens. With a larger and larger percentage of the population utilizing home computers and the Internet everyday, it’s come to the point where we really should have this low cost, valuable resource in place. Having this resource would help citizens (Especially people who work days) in getting information, forms and the ability to communicate with their town officials and employees via email. After all town government is here to serve the people, and to serve them well there must be greater communication. This will serve that purpose.
Look at the web site http://www.town.scituate.ma.us/ . This is an example of an excellent public town website. They have all the information a citizen would need including: license applications and permit forms, Town Bylaws, Town Charter, Meeting minutes and so much more useful information here. A citizen could get any document or information they need regarding their town government. All Town Selectmen, Public Officials and employees have email and can be contacted by their constituents. Every town surrounding Clinton has a website for better communication with the public that they serve. Here are their websites:
http://www.ci.lancaster.ma.us/http://www.town.sterling.ma.us/http://www.boylston.org/http://www.townofbolton.com/http://www.townofberlin.com/http://www.westboylston.com/http://www.shrewsbury-ma.gov/My suggestion is to modernize the flow of information and services from the town government to our citizens by creating an “Official Town Website”, which could be used to download and also submit different types of application forms such as building permits, license applications and many other forms. If I could put this website together for well under $200 then there is absolutely no reason the town of Clinton cannot afford to do so. I’m certain there are people in town who are much more knowledgeable than I am about website development, who would volunteer to develop a similar web site and a town employee could be trained how to upload data, including meeting minutes, forms and also update the web site on a regular basis.