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Date: 11/16/2021
BELCHERTOWN – After discussing potential renovations to the town’s website during the previous two meetings, the Belchertown Select Board formally approved a motion to renovate the website during its Nov. 10 meeting.
To start the discussion about the website renovation, board member Nicholas Pucel said the current scope of work would cost the town $7,340.
“We are looking at this as our maximum cost unless we decide to redo the entire vision of the website. If we decide apart from the baseline items, we want to do visuals and switch up the entire site it may be an extra couple thousand on top of this, but this number should be the absolute maximum,” he said.
Board member Ronald Aponte said he was in favor of using American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds for the website maintenance.
“If you think about it, it is really to just kind of correct known issues and as far as ARPA money goes, it is such a small insignificant amount in comparison to the $4-plus million we have,” he said.
Once the funding is secured, Pucel said the next step is to go back to Revise, the company working on the website repairs, for the final number.
“After this we go back to Revise and have them resubmit the actual number if there are any duplicates, so it may go below this. Once we have the number, we get it signed off by the town and they begin their work,” he said. “This is the kicking off point to let them begin the process.”
Board Chair Jennifer Turner said using the ARPA money, any spending beyond the initial quote would require further planning from the town.
“We had discussed this as being part of Phase One and I will also comment that the same discussion we had about ARPA funding related to the ambulance is also relevant here and there is no plan in place for the ARPA money, so we are getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. But it is a small amount of money in a big bucket for economic development,” she said. “This is really just maintenance to fix the current website we have.”
Turner added that there have been discussions about further renovating the website beyond the current plan with Revise.
“[Vice Chair Jim Barry] and I have been discussing with [Town Planner Doug Albertson] about an economic development resource which would help some of the website, marketing, way finding and branding, all the stuff we had as a discussion item for the Local Rapid Recovery stuff would probably be part of the next phase of the website,” she said.
The board unanimously approved the use of $7,340 for maintenance on the town’s website.
As part of his regular report, Pucel said the Board of Health was looking at lifting the indoor mask mandate in December.
“The mask mandate will stay in effect until the December meeting where they will revisit this and take into account some of the numbers that may come out after the Thanksgiving season. If those numbers continue to look unsavory, we may continue the mask mandate into January,” he said.
During the meeting, the board also hosted pinning ceremonies for new firefighters/EMTs Stephen Sengebush and Ryan Bateman.
The Select Board next meets on Nov. 15 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the Nov. 25 edition of The Reminder.