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Date: 7/19/2023
BELCHERTOWN — The Select Board met with Communications Committee Chair Chris Martin to discuss revisions to the town website. The board also spoke with Town Administrator Steve Williams about a LED sign at its July 10 meeting.
Select Board member Lesa Lessard Pearson invited Martin to the meeting to get an update the communications plan, town website and their committee’s priorities.
The Communications Committee has been working with Revize, with which the town has a contract.
Revize is the company that works with local municipalities on developing and updating their website.
Martin said, “We put a bunch of revisions into it. A lot more emphasis on feasibility, a lot more emphasis on finding things really quick and bringing forward a lot more of our residential community pages. Putting those things in navigation so anyone who is new to town or just wants to find information can do so quickly with businesses in town.”
Martin added his committee reached out to each department in town and asked them any changes they would like to see to their specific page whether it’s a link that doesn’t work, new contact information or removing someone who is no longer employed.
Revize received the revisions around three weeks prior to the meeting, according to Martin and added they are in the queue waiting for their revisions to be reviewed and adjusted on the current town website.
“Eventually they are going to migrate both our pages on to a new template,” Martin said.
Different departments like the Recreation Department have their own individual webpage but Martin hopes that the new town website can eventually include each department under one domain.
Martin said, “The plan is to have a presentation page that says what that department is, who are the head people of that department and other specifics. If they have their own website like presentation. We don’t have the capability of that on our page so we will link their website from our main page as well.”
Select Board member Jen Turner added there are many communities’ websites that still have links to a specific department’s webpage.
Martin added he will continue to let those department heads manage their own sites and his committee is creating more of a hub page for Belchertown to branch off to other departments.
Martin added that in his opinion, the Revize eGov CMS is not the most useful system
He said, “The system itself and I think town employees who have to deal with it will agree that its archaic. It reminds me of 1990’s websites which is obviously not what anyone wants to hear.”
Martin says it depends on the direction the town wants to go in, but a brand new website could cost around $30,000.
Revize and CivicPlus are two website companies that were discussed by Martin.
Turner added, “I have seen what Revize can do with community web pages and they don’t have to be, they can be functional and they can look good too.”
Martin wants to fulfill the contract with Revize and get the website up to date before considering moving to CivicPlus or another company.
The Select Board said they want the new webpage to be easy for everyone to use and be able to get information out quick.
Select Board member Peg Louraine said, “It’s more important to me that it is user friendly. I care what it looks like, but I want people to be able to get where they want to get to.”
Martin said the Communications Committee is looking at updating the town’s social media policy as well.
“The other major priority that has come forward a couple times is the social media policy. Social media is an immediate way to get communications out to if not to the total town but reach a large mass of people. We were taking that up to review it and give advice back to the board before we found that is our obligation. We have not met since those decisions was made. We are continuing to work on it.”
He added that looking at the social media policy that existed is not great and thanks there are some changes that need to be made to certain sections.
Once they finish going over the policy, they will present a revised one in hopes of getting it approved.
The communications conversation shifted to Williams who is working on increasing the transmission of town news.
He added that he is already in the process of working with the Police Department to place an electronic sign on State Street by the police station that will be able to put out townwide notification and news.
Williams said the sign can be used for emergencies but also to announce Town Meeting, high school graduation and town elections, for example.
Williams said other locations and additional signs were discussed but the town must look at the budget because the sign can cost $30,000 to $40,000.
The Select Board were presented with three different designs for a potential sign but decided to wait for another time to discuss that issue in case they want to use that money to further update their website or other areas of communications.