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| By G. Michael Dobbs Managing Editor CHICOPEE The city is developing a new Web site that will bring much of the information and many of the services of City Hall into people's homes. "This is a great opportunity to open up City Hall to the public and make out city services and information available 24 hours a day. Our goal is to have the most informative, user-friendly Web site of any city or town on Western Massachusetts. We want the new Website to be a useful tool for our citizens to help make their life easier. We also want the Web site to be a showcase for the city so companies and businesses thinking about locating here can see what Chicopee has to offer," Mayor Michael Bissonnette said. The city has had a Web site for the past seven years and Bissonnette wanted to update it. To get input from the public about what features a new Web site should have, the city ran a poll on the existing site through April 30. The poll showed that most of the respondents were residents who have some sort of high-speed connection and use the Internet several times a day. Seventy percent of those who answered the poll said that content and information were the most important aspects of a municipal site. The four top-ranked features for a new Web site were downloadable forms and documents, city department and contact information, online bill paying and calendar and event information. The four types of meeting and event information respondents would like to see were Board and Aldermen meetings and minutes, parks and recreations event, city activities and events, commission and boards meeting and minutes. Respondents suggested the police and fire logs be added to the site as well as an "Ask the Mayor" feature. One person would like e-mail links to the aldermen on the site, while another would like to pay her electric bill on-line. Daily updating of the site was also noted as very important by a number of respondents. The site is being built by cdeVision of Holyoke and is expected to go be completed in either late July or early August. It will have a new address of www.chicopeema.gov. The expectation is eventually expected to include revising the Web sites for both the School Department and the library. "In today's technology driven society, a Web site is usually the first place people go for information or help. Chicopee's new Web site will be a gateway for people looking for city events, helpful information, news and information about their government, links to community businesses and attractions and useful forms and documents normally only available at City Hall. This is a tool that our city departments can use to better serve and inform the citizens and taxpayers of Chicopee. Our ultimate goals for the Web site is to make the lives of Chicopee residents and businesses easier," Bissonnette said. |