SNOQUALMIE – Most everyone knows anything that can cut down on red tape is something in which to invest.
That’s why the city of Snoqualmie launched its new Web site last week. Officials hope it will streamline how people conduct business with the city.
“We want to provide electronic services to the public as much as we can,” said Snoqualmie Building Official Jim Tinner, who was in charge of implementing the new site.
The Web-site update came at the request of Mayor Fuzzy Fletcher, who wanted more services available online and wanted to create more opportunities for residents to give the city feedback. Tinner said the old Snoqualmie Web site, which first went up in 1998 with the help of a volunteer, was hard to update and cost too much time to manage.
“It required an almost full-time person to keep it updated,” Tinner said.
The new site, managed by a municipality Web-site creator called GovOffice.com, can be updated independent of a webmaster. After a brief class, department heads learned how they could update their own sections on the site.
“Each department can maintain their own area without having to have HTML [a computer language used to create Web sites] knowledge or experience,” Tinner said.
He added that paperwork should be reduced since the site is more user friendly for both residents and the city employees who update it. There is a feedback form for constituent comments, and application forms for permits are available for downloading. Tinner said he hopes to eventually have online permitting and scheduling features as well.
P.J. Rodriguez, systems network administrator for Snoqualmie, said there was a one-time charge of $500 to create the Web site and the city will pay $35 a month for GovOffice.com to host it. He is confident everyone will save money with the new site in the long run.
“Time is money,” Rodriguez said. “When you do things electronically, it gets done quicker and hopefully more accurately.”
Since the site went up on April 22, Tinner said he has been pleasantly surprised to see the number of hits averaging about 100 unique visitors a day.
“It’s been a hit,” Tinner said.
On the Web:
The new city of Snoqualmie
Web site can be found at
www.cityofsnoqualmie.net.
