Web site dedicated to Mansfield Township should be on-line within the next few months.
By: William Wichert
MANSFIELD Within the next few months, residents should be able to go online to see what township officials are up to.
As part of a greater effort to make the municipal government more accessible to the community, the Township Committee is finalizing plans to create the first Web site dedicated to Mansfield Township.
Township Committee members are reviewing a contract from City Connections LLC, a North Brunswick-based Web site development company that has offered to set up a township Web site for $2,985, said Township Committeeman Jaime Devereaux. The township would then pay the company an annual fee to update the site at the township’s behest, he said.
Mr. Devereaux said he contacted about seven municipalities with Web sites built by City Connections, which has developed sites for the New Jersey League of Municipalities and several other communities in the tri-state area, and found that the company has a good reputation.
"You can’t go with some local person who’s going to do it as a favor," said Mr. Devereaux, a former project manager for a Web site development company. "For the quality of the Web site and the amount of hosting they’ll do and the amount of pages, (the City Connections’ contract is worth it)."
If the contract is approved over the next few weeks, City Connections will present its own Web site designs for township officials to consider, but Mr. Devereaux said the Township Committee already has some ideas in mind.
One feature that the municipal Web site should include, he said, is the agendas for Township Committee meetings as well as the ordinances that are voted upon at the meetings.
"It won’t be like, ‘let me see what happened in 1995,’" said Mr. Devereaux. "It’ll be for the year or a couple of months."
The Web site is also expected to include a "resident notification system," in which residents who have registered themselves on the site would receive automatic e-mailed updates, notifying them of upcoming township events, Mr. Devereaux said.
"We have emergency meetings sometimes and people don’t have time to read it in the newspapers that we have an emergency meeting," he said.
Mr. Devereaux said the Web site is only one of several ways that the Township Committee members are trying to improve communication between themselves and the residents.
Committee members, for instance, have started holding informational sessions at the municipal building on the Saturday morning after every regularly scheduled Township Committee meeting. At these sessions, one or two members will be available from 10 a.m. till noon to meet with residents.
"We’re making ourselves as accessible as possible. I got people ringing my bell," said Mr. Devereaux. "They’ll (residents) be able to meet with the committee and understand what’s going on."
The Township Committee also has begun talks on creating a quarterly newsletter for residents to stay informed about municipal affairs without having to go online.
"The purpose of the newsletter is because not everybody has a computer," said Mr. Devereaux. "If everybody knew how to use the Internet, we wouldn’t need a newsletter."

