tl;dr As a programmer and web developer, I've noticed some opportunities to improve communication through the town website and the platform used to host it, Civic Plus.
I just don't see that we're making the right amount of effort to solve this problem and to help people in the community feel at ease with what's going Hi Apex, it's Andre. I've heard a lot of feedback about the utility issue. It's been a while, I get that, and some pain points. My wife and I, unfortunately, we don't have a lot of the big discrepancies I've heard or seen online or that people have told me in public. I was just thinking, there's got to be a better way to communicate.
How do we, number one, acknowledge the issue, and number two, keep people consistently informed? Having a communication plan is key, especially when there are issues that you have to address. So, just looking at the town's website, I noticed something that stood out to me immediately. When I scroll on the homepage, there's not a lot of information about something that's obviously stressing out our neighbors. I would recommend that we change this. We should put that information front and center. Most people don't go directly to URLs when they visit a website. I know I don't, I may bookmark even some particular information that I'm looking for frequently, but you know, you don't want people to get lost in the clicks.
So whether that's in this area here or something, we should have a way to communicate the updates on the status of this migration so people can at least rest cities there. Then, as I go to the utility account and access page, there is a last billing update. It doesn't really address the pain point that people are having, you know. So I would actually recommend putting something at the top of the page. People are not prone to scrolling down, and we have an FAQ section. But even just rearranging that and providing content that actually supports the issues that they're you know, arriving at, or the issues that are yet to be addressed, those frequently asked questions could again over communicate, change the cadence of providing information to people, they're less likely to be as irritated if we were to do something like that.
Secondly, I went to the platform that hosts or runs the website Civic Plus, and just, you know, the nerd in my brain, it just kind of let me know that there's probably a way, even if the platform is not natively capable of pushing out those updates, and lo and behold, they do have an API. For those that don't know, I'm actually a developer. When I see an API, that means that I can do just about anything my brain imagines, because if it's well documented, like they're saying, the town could possibly hire a contractor for a short project, to, you know, execute on those requirements. So I would even recommend that, if there's something that the town doesn't see can be done with its current platform, pay somebody to do it, it'd be well worth it. The frustration people have with this, and you know, the low cadence of communication, is probably causing more frustration. I believe that's a pretty easy solve.
I want to say also that looking at their site, there was something else that stood out to me. There is a mass notification system. So I'm pretty confident that one of the API integrations would be to use the account system for the utilities to send people information, which would be fantastic. You know, if people don't check their mail, people aren't on social media, communicating, communicating until people say stop, it would probably alleviate some of the pressure until the problem is 100% resolved. I'm solutions-based, and I also understand that we live in a world where technology is driving a lot of our progress and sometimes a lack thereof. So why don't we take advantage of it where we can? Why don't we strive for improvements?
Just something that, you know, I was curious about this morning, and I just don't see that we're making the right amount of effort to solve this problem and to help people in the community to feel at ease with what's going on. In the meantime, there are things we can do today that would alleviate some of the pressure and pain points. We'll talk to you soon.