While the borough’s Web address will still be Sayreville.com, the site is undergoing an overhaul so that residents will be able to pay their bills online.
Borough officials said the new Web site is being launched this month. In addition to paying their municipal bills, residents will be able to access construction and registration forms and other borough documents.
But the benefits of the new home page are not restricted to residents, according to borough Business Administrator Jeffry Bertrand. The Web site, being launched through Cit-e-Net, LLC, will also make operations more efficient by streamlining processes and relieving municipal employees of excess paperwork.
Cit-e-Net has been providing Internet-based solutions and Web site development for governments, including the city of Trenton and Sussex County, since 2000. The Little Falls-based company’s own Web site states that governments become more efficient and residents receive improved access to city hall through the online services.
Bertrand said the program, which will cost the borough $9,050 per year, will be capable of taking payments online for taxes, as well as water and sewer bills, by next month. Users will also soon be able to access construction forms and general registration forms for such things as dog or cat licenses and recreational programs, he added.
“This site is going to include those features,” Bertrand said.
The $9,050 annual cost includes $4,300 in maintenance and technical support fees, $1,250 for the service request program, $1,500 for the online payment program, $1,000 for the utilities program, and $1,000 for general online payments like road opening permits or accident report fees.
Bertrand said it is difficult to calculate the savings that the new Web site’s automated services will realize for the borough, but it is going to help the town manage 52,000 water accounts annually. Borough employees will be able to attend to other tasks, as there will be less mail to handle and fewer patrons in need of in-person assistance at borough hall.
“How do you calculate [those] savings,” Bertrand said.
The agreement with Cit-e-Net is the result of a longtime desire to have online payment become an option for borough residents, Bertrand said. The volunteer who created the borough’s first Web site moved out of state, he noted,making it necessary to pursue ways of providing a site that can be updated with ease, and has services that can save residents and borough employees time with bills and other services.
Officials talked to different vendors who could develop the site, and decided to go with Cit-e-Net inMarch. The cost of having an outside vendor input information onto the borough’s Web page was $3,000, but with the new site, the municipality will handle that task internally at no additional cost, Bertrand said.
TheWeb site will have amultitude of forums and also an FAQ area to direct users with specific needs to the appropriate departments. Bertrand added that users can submit their e-mail addresses to the Web site and receive subscription newsletters online that will notify them of such things as scheduling changes for garbage pickup, meeting schedules, parades or new recreation programs.
“It will not cost anymoney to subscribe,” Bertrand said. “…The user of theWeb site – the resident- will control whether they are on the subscription list or not.”
“The nice thing is we do notmanage the e-mails,” Bertrand added.
Residents will also be able to put in service requests through the Web site for such things as potholes or watermeters, he said. The input users enter into the site automatically generates a work order, and residents who submit a work order will receive an e-mail notification on the status of their requests, he added.
“Our office is only open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.,” Bertrand said. “This opens it up 24/7.”
The work order feature would also be used internally, so that department heads can submit orders, he said. The feature makes it easier for themunicipality tomanage such requests.
Since the site’s design and updates are being done internally, the town can change the Web site with greater ease than if an outside entity were hired to do the work, Bertrand said.
“Each department is managing their content on their section of theWeb site,” he said. WilliamP. Benzie, a sales representative for Cit-e-Net, said Perth Amboy is also in the process of putting its Cit-e-NetWeb site online. He said Cit-e-Net representatives went to Sayreville to provide borough employees with a user training session in order to show the department heads how to manage their individual content.
“Residents will have a much more dynamicWeb site,” Benzie said adding, “Much more than they did in the past.”
He said the borough will benefit from the program, as it can forego the cost of a webmaster by having employees manage the site at no additional cost.
“They are going to get a lot of benefit out of it- more so than the oldWeb site,” Benzie said.
The newWeb site also has the potential to increase participation at borough-run programs such as the summer camp at Burke’s Park, Bertrand said.He added that people can better inform themselves through the site, and more participants would be able to use the borough’s recreation programs and offset costs.
Emergency notifications could have benefits for police and commuters in the event of a traffic accident in the borough, Bertrand said. He added that users who subscribe for emergency notifications would be able to know if there is an intersection to avoid when they receive notice of the accident via e-mail.
“It helps the police department because there would be less traffic heading in that direction, as they redirect traffic around the accident,” Bertrand said. “Both sides of the issue are served by that.”