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Uploaded: Tuesday, May 19, 2009, 12:23 AM
Palo Alto website to get facelift -- or makeover
Year-long effort taps into city resident-experts in website design and functionality to redo widely ridiculed city website
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by Gennady Sheyner
Palo Alto Online Staff
Palo Alto's official website -- a longstanding object of confusion, anger and ridicule in a city that likes to flaunt its technological might -- could be heading for a facelift.
Or possibly full-on plastic surgery.
A committee of 12 volunteers who have spent the better part of the past year discussing plans to refurbish the much-maligned site, submitted an ambitious, 69-point plan for revamping the site to an enthusiastic City Council Monday night.
The revamp will start by losing the dark-grey background, then revise the links, simplify the flow and basically make the site "user-centric" from end to end.
If the vision of the Website Advisory Commission comes to fruition, www.cityofpaloalto.org will soon become a one-stop portal for visitors who wish to check up on current construction projects, dig up old staff reports or find someone to fix those annoying potholes in front of their homes.
It would also link users to neighborhood groups, entertain them with webcam feeds and notify them when a public works crew is closing a neighborhood street to work on a construction project.
Most importantly, the redone site would allow users to get information without exhausting their patience and their searching fingers.
The City Council reacted to the committee's report with unabashed enthusiasm. It approved 7-0 (Vice Mayor Jack Morton and Councilman John Barton were absent), the committee's recommendations.
Committee members vowed to continue working closely with city staff to implement the recommendations, but there is no timeline or cost estimate yet for the makeover
The major changes are split into three "buckets." The first includes 13 improvements that would be highly visible and that could be accomplished at virtually no cost. Some are already in the works or have been completed, including online payment of utility bills (which the city launched this month), posting a phone directory of city officials and changing the website's color scheme, which currently features white letters over a deep grey background.
Buckets 2 and 3 list items that would require a greater investment, including personalized web pages, historical documents and webcam elements. Staff plans to present recommendations for implementing these items back to the council in the fall.
Sheri Furman, who represented the group in front of the council, said the goal is to both allow visitors to find the information they seek and to lure them to other resources and businesses in Palo Alto.
"Not only do we want to make sure people find what they're looking for, we'd also like to entice them to explore the site and say, 'Wow. I didn't know that was in Palo Alto,'" Furman said.
The council had nothing but praise for Furman and her colleagues on the committee -- Philippe Alexis, Mark Eden, Carol Gilbert, Bob Harrington, Lori Heyman, Arthur Keller, Gary Lindgren, Sean Momeny, John Raftrey, Joe Villareal and Dave Voelker.
But council members also suggested a few features they'd like to see. Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto said she hoped the improved site would enhance the city's ability to poll its residents and gauge their opinions. Councilman Greg Schmid said he's like to enable users to be able to easily find historical reports and other city documents.
Councilman Pat Burt, meanwhile, quipped that the site's enhanced Web 2.0 capabilities could include GPS monitoring of Mayor Peter Drekmeier's bicycle or City Manager James Keene's jogging routes.
While that function is unlikely to materialize any time soon, most of the Bucket 1 items could be completed by the end of the summer, Administrative Services Department Director Lalo Perez said Monday. Perez was the key staff member in creating and shepherding the committee along as advisers and working partners with staff members.
Councilman Sid Espinosa joined his colleagues in thanking the committee of volunteers for their hard work and said he looked forward to hearing staff's suggestions for implementing the committee's ambitious plan.
"I hope, when we have this come forward with staff in the fall, that it comes with an aggressive implementation plan and with more ideas on how to engage with community members on how to make these things a reality," Espinosa said.
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Posted by Local Web Designer, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 1:00 am IT'S CERTAINLY ABOUT TIME.
NAY: WAY PAST TIME. The website as it has been has quite shamed Palo Alto, supposedly a city serendipitously situated enough to harness the wonderful array of technical and IT skills in the "heart of the Silicon Valley".
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Posted by wow, a resident of the Barron Park neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 10:32 am The great thing about all the negative comments made about the website in the past is that we no longer have to rehash them.
In fact, we can start making some positive comments about this re-direction of ideas and effort.
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Posted by FutureBob, a resident of the Professorville neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 11:20 am Website? A website is soooo early 21st century. Haven't you gotten your nano-scale neural net implant yet? Granted, some of the City of PA pages have been taking 3-4 femtoseconds to render in your hippocampian subocular field, but I was able to pull up the page on the city-wide yard sale just now without even thinking about it. What a great time to be alive!
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Posted by Nonny, a resident of Another Palo Alto neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 11:57 am Great! Now the citizens can blame each other instead of the city when the web site fails to live up to the expectations of all 60,000 individuals. I suggest you put Sheri Furman's email address on the site so that future complaints can go directly to her.
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Posted by Marvin, a resident of the Charleston Gardens neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 12:02 pm "The City Council reacted to the committee's report with unabashed enthusiasm."
Clearly the council is hoping this will make the residents forget about the council's incompetence and waste of money in this matter
"Councilwoman Yoriko Kishimoto said she hoped the improved site would enhance the city's ability to poll its residents and gauge their opinions.'
Why bother. The council only wants to hear from us when we agree with everything they do, since they know best. Maybe they should enhance a feature that allows us to shower praise on Kishimoto and her colleagues.
"Councilman Pat Burt, meanwhile, quipped that the site's enhanced Web 2.0 capabilities could include GPS monitoring of Mayor Peter Drekmeier's bicycle or City Manager James Keene's jogging routes."
Good to see that our council is dealing with the important issues and that there will be someone on the council to replace Kishimoto's pithy comments when she is termed out this year.
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Posted by Sheri Furman, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 12:23 pm Nonny et al,
My email is sheri11@earthlink.net. Send me all the complaints you want; no (attempted) good deed should go unpunished.
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Posted by opposible thumbs, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 2:27 pm Sherri,
Please copy the City of San Carlos website. It gives essential information with simple drop down lists. Brilliant.
By the way, if there is another social engineer in your committee's midst, please duct tape their hands to their mouths for the duration of this 'makeover' project. I only want the facts, not soothing wallpaper. As for "lure them to other resources and businesses in Palo Alto", thanks but no thanks.
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Posted by Bud, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 19, 2009 at 4:59 pm It's about time that this fiasco of former Administrative Services Director Carl Yeats got fixed. Yeats left with a big fat retirement but not before the Childrens Theatre accounting scandal under his watch and the last Utilities Department scandal when he and Emily arrison ran that department.
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Posted by Outside Observer, a resident of another community, on May 19, 2009 at 5:27 pm Bud,
100% correct and on target.
It was Carl Yeats who personally selected the grey background/white text format, against the wishes of the majority of city staff.
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Posted by pat, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 20, 2009 at 2:31 pm Where can we find the proposal with 3 buckets and 69 points that was presented to Council?
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Posted by Sheri Furman, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on May 21, 2009 at 10:59 am Pat,
The list is at Web Link
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Posted by One More Outside Observer, a resident of another community, on May 21, 2009 at 8:19 pm OMG! I heard that tune before! I am so happy I am long gone!
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Posted by neighbor, a resident of another community, on May 22, 2009 at 9:45 am Website remodeling, but police budget cuts...very dumb. Don't you guys read the crime statistics?
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Posted by fireman, a resident of another community, on May 22, 2009 at 10:14 am hey if you can't figure out how to do it right, BURRY IT IN BUCKS $$$$$$. Good point Neighbor.
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