News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The town of Monterey launching a new website and new meeting software.
Monterey Mayor Alex Garcia said he has wanted a new website for quite some time and the breaking point was when the town wanted to post a special called Civil Service Board meeting on the website and the company required a 48-hour notice. Garcia said the new website and meeting software called CivicPlus will be a major upgrade for the town as it will make the website more user-friendly.
“We have to contact somebody to do something,” Garcia said. “It takes time, time that in this day in age we don’t have so being able to have full control of our website, being that our website would be user friendly I think that it would improve the relations between the town and the citizens.”
Garcia said both softwares together will cost the town a sum of $6,000 a year. Garcia said making the switch will end up saving the town money.
“We saved $9,880 a year and then some,” Garcia said. “We would save an extra $2,040 is what they charge us for our website yearly so yeah, we are still saving money. It’s not cheaper but it is a savings compared to what we are saving by not paying for our maintenance plan.”
Garcia said the software will make uploading meeting minutes faster and easier. Garcia said the software will also help the town migrate information from the current website to the new website.
“They are also going to go back five years of meeting documents and put them all on the website,” Garcia said. “So they will digitize them and put them on the website.”
Garcia said the town does have to pay a one-time fee of $1,850 for the software. Garcia said that if the town receives a grant the website will allow links to each meeting for citizens to watch on YouTube if they are unable to attend or watch live on Facebook. Garcia said the software company told him it would be 12 weeks before the website migration was completed.
