Outta site

 

Madison Heights Web site ranks among state’s top 10

 

By Audra Quinn

C & G Staff Writer

     Of the 547 municipalities in Michigan, the city of Madison Heights was recently ranked in the top 10 of municipal Web sites in the fourth annual assessment of local government sites conducted by cyber-state.org, a non-partisan, nonprofit organization.

     Based on the 2004 Web site Attribute Evaluation System, Madison Heights received a score of 38 out of 45, tying with the city of Novi’s site for fifth best overall.

     Residents who frequently use the site can attest to the quality of this resource. Lee Hasho, member of the library advisory board and charter commission board, has been a resident of Madison Heights for 43 years, and says she uses the site frequently.

     “It just keeps getting better and better,” said Hasho, who admits she’s only become computer literate in the past few years.

     “If I can’t make it to the City Council meeting, I can go in and read the minutes right online. I can connect right to the library, my sons have gone on for job applications, and there’s applications to serve on any of the volunteer boards,” she said, highlighting a few of the features that she uses.

     Hasho said she is “thoroughly in awe” of the city employees who have created a site that competes with such large cities as Novi. “When I look at the size of Novi and I look at our 7 1/2 square miles, just the difference in the socio-economic level between our cities, it’s fantastic,” she said.

     Other features of the award-winning site include the recent addition of an Internet mapping service, which provides aerial photography in a graphical form for use in planning and researching locations within the city for developers, residents, and businesses.

     “It’s really cool. You need to try it,” said City Manager Jon Austin, of the mapping service.  “Once you get in there, you can show the zoning boundaries, property lines. A lot of what we can get out of our [Geographic Information System], people can get right online,” he said.

     The June 2004 assessment and report from cyber-state.org states that, “The City of Madison’s Web site contains an ample amount of information upfront but doesn’t lose focus displaying popular ‘Services Directory Forms’ and ‘Online Services’ options that many visitors specifically come to the Web site for. This Web site also contains a vast archive of government procedures and happenings from 1994 forward.”

     Webmaster and Assistant City Manager Ben Meyers takes pride in keeping the site up to date. “I think it’s important that you have fresh content there that people need, presented in such a way that people can find it easily,” he said.

     Meyers says that the maintenance is a task he attends to daily. “I certainly spend a little bit of time each day on it. It’s not like a once a month thing for me,” he said, explaining that some projects require large chunks of time, while others involve simply creating a link to an existing page.

     The site includes every city employee, department phone number, and city resource a resident could ever need, accessible 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Users can listen to an oral history of the city, post a garage sale notice, apply for a business license, even peruse every page of the annual budget.

     “Considering that 547 local units of government in Michigan have a Web presence according to cyber-state.org, we’re very pleased to be selected as one of the top 10 in the state.  To be able to maintain a high-quality Web site with limited resources and availability of funds is something we’re certainly proud of and is reflective of our overall commitment to great service for our residents and businesses,” Austin said.

     You can contact Audra Quinn at aquinn@candgnews.com