Pankow students design township Web site

Site expected to go live in early March

 

By Cortney Dueweke

C & G Staff Writer

     HARRISON TOWNSHIP —Thanks to a partnership between the township government and students at L’Anse Creuse Public Schools’ Pankow Vocational-Technical Center, Harrison soon will have an official Web site allowing visitors to pay utility bills, view board agendas, check assessing information and more at the click of a mouse.

     With the township in a major budget crunch, Harrison financial officer/controller Melissa Marsh felt it would be prudent to explore options within the community instead of turning to a commercial Web designer.

     So last fall, Marsh approached Debra Schmid, a Pankow Web design instructor, and asked if her class would be willing to create a site for the township. Schmid agreed, and assigned the task as her class’s main project for the first semester.

     The students — divided into 11 teams — worked on their designs from September through late November. Schmid then narrowed the designs down to the five best and showed them to Marsh and Deputy Clerk Jan Jorgensen, who selected two and asked that they be merged to form the final design.

     The winning designers were juniors Samantha Lord and Dan Merritt, and seniors Kaitie McPhee, Tim Sexton and Steve Swensen. The students will attend an upcoming board meeting to show off the site and describe its components, said Marsh.

     The fact that the assignment was real instead of hypothetical was a major motivator for the students — especially since they knew their ideas would be judged and possibly implemented, said Schmid. “It just makes the whole assignment come to life,” she said.

     Marsh said she was “really impressed” with the results and felt the quality was on par with what the township would have received had the site been designed by a professional Web design company.

     She said she expects the site to become operational in early March, although some features won’t be available until later in the spring.

     Ultimately, she said the site will include links to all of the township departments; answers to frequently asked questions; access to assessing, accounting and treasury information; the ability to pay utilities and property taxes online; and access to board minutes, meeting agendas and budgets.

     Schmid said several advanced Web design students currently are fine-tuning the site, and that all of the portions requiring more advanced tasks — such as making payments — are linked to professional sites that “can handle volume like that and complexity to that degree.”

     Once it goes live, the site will be located at www.harrison-township.org, said Marsh.

     You can reach Cortney Dueweke at cdueweke@candgnews.com