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Date: 10/22/2015
CHICOPEE – You want to pay your city bills online? Receive notices about city meetings? Find out if there is an emergency? Get instruction about where to park your car during a snowstorm?
The new Chicopee municipal website can do all of that and much more, delivering information as an email or text message.
The new site made its debut at a press conference on Oct. 20. The site is so new that it has not yet been recognized by search engines so Mayor Richard Kos asked that people log on by typing in its address: www.chicopeema.gov.
Vanessa Oquendo, the director of Information Technology for the city, explained the previous website was difficult to update and actually lost data.
Kos thanked the City Council for its support of the appropriation of $35,000 to pay for the site’s development. The city used Civicplus to develop the site, a company that specializes in building websites for municipalities. Oquendo explained the agreement with the developers include updating the site very two years.
She added members of the city department have been trained to make necessary changes to the content to the site.
“The tools are easier to use,” Oquendo said.
Another feature of the new site is the city’s “open checkbook,” which allows residents to monitor the city’s payments to vendors and others.
Oquendo demonstrated another feature of the website titled “How do I …” that offers answer to questions such as: “How to I make I payment?” “How do I register to vote?” “How do I contact the mayor?” “How do I report a concern?”
Oquendo said the website is now “a centralized location for all information going out to residents.”