Council Members' Web Pages Revamped as City's Web Site Gets a Slow Makeover

By Sam Merten Fri., May 22 2009 at 5:08 PM

Categories: Stuff and Nonsense

The city wisely didn't bother to make a new Web page for term-limited Mitchell Rasansky, but it did find the time to cook up one for Carolyn Davis, who faces Ron Price in the June 13 runoff election.

Whilst digging around for info on the city's Web site yesterday, I clicked on one of the council members' pages, which, to my surprise, looked nothing like the previous page design that was apparently implemented shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet.

Of course, while the new design is long overdue, it seems like the wrong time to be spending dough on new Web pages -- you know, with a $190 million budget deficit and all. But, no worries, we're assured by Danielle McClelland with the city's Public Information Office -- the work was done in-house.

"If our staff can get to them in the midst of their other stuff, then some other pages will be updated and refreshed," she tells Unfair Park.

Yup, the entire site is set for an overhaul, beginning with 12 of the 15 council members (pages for Mitchell Rasansky and Dr. Elba Garcia weren't changed as they're leaving because of term limits, and Mayor Tom Leppert's hasn't been updated). McClelland says the first wave of new pages appeared online in mid-April, and there's no timetable for when the site will be completed.

"With so many pages, it's obviously going to take a while," she says.

So as the city attempts to slice and dice services on its way to a balanced budget, everyone can look forward to watching the Web site improve literally one page at a time.