Buckfield launches official website

BUCKFIELD — When Buckfield Town Manager Glen Holmes first took office on October 1, he reported that one of his first goals would be to bring that rural municipality into the digital age.  Holmes announced recently that this self-imposed mandate has been met, with the launch of the town’s first official website.

To visit Buckfield’s new home on the world wide web, simply point your computer’s web browser to www.townofbuckfield.com

Previously, Buckfield did have a page on the Internet, but that was a seldom used “personal web page” set up on web space made available by the town’s internet service provider, Oxford Networks.  It only contained the most spartan information and was, reportedly, seldom updated.

For anyone who may still have that page bookmarked, Holmes does plan to add a redirection link to the new official site.

The new website is hosted by GovOffice (www.govoffice.com), a division of Avenet, LLC.  Avenet is headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota and maintains a customer service center in Mayville, North Dakota.

“It’s an organization that MMA (the Maine Municipal Authority) found that does towns,” said Holmes.  “That’s their prime directive, to do [web hosting for] towns [and] municipal governments.”

According to an Internet consulting firm, The McKenna Group, “Avenet has developed one of the most advanced online web page creation technologies available today.”

Holmes stated that he is quite happy with the pricing stucture quoted by GovOffice.  For $500 “up front” the town received a complete suite of templates that it can customize to meet Buckfield’s own unique needs.  Holmes described the recurring monthly hosting fees as “cheap for the year.”

“Right now, [the website has] got the basic government necessities that should be there,” Holmes said, although he stressed that he is adding more content every day.

Holmes plans to have separate sections for each town department and committee.  Minutes from all meetings, as well as advance meeting agendas, will be posted as soon as they become available.

In order to facilitate the best and most rapid communication between the town’s various boards and its citizens, Holmes plans to post minutes as soon after a meeting is held as possible, even before they are formally adopted at a boards subsequent meeting.

“Probably, I will.  But it’s marked.  Any minutes that are up prior to the next meeting are in draft form,” he stressed.

Also posted on the site will be information on all of the town’s elected and appointed positions, including pictures and contact information, as well as the date each seat expires.  Although all town boards are currently fully staffed, any new vacancies will be posted “immediately.”

The website also has a form that visitors can fill out in order to be placed on the town’s informational e-mailing list.  Holmes, who touts himself as a proponent of keeping “strong open lines of communication,” believes that this e-mail list will help citizens to “stay in the loop.”

Holmes also hopes to eventually add broadband content, such as streaming video of municipal meetings.  This feature, he believes, will benefit those in the town who do not have cable television, and so cannot watch broadcasts on the town’s public access channel.

“Why ‘dot com’, instead of ‘dot net’, or ‘dot org’,” Holmes was asked by Judy Berg.  “We’re not [a] commercial [website.]”

“We could have gone out and got a ‘dot gov’ site,” Holmes answered, “the problem is that it [the domain name] would have been tremendously long.

“’Dot com’ is still the most commonly recognized [internet domain extension] in the world,” he continued.  “If you can be a ‘dot com’, you are going to get a lot more ‘hits’ that a ‘dot org’, a ‘dot net’, or anything.”

Holmes further noted that the GovOffice package comes with “some pretty good statistical tracking.”  He is hopeful that this information will help him to better manage the site to meet citizen needs as time progresses.

Holmes stressed that anyone with ideas for additional items that could be placed on the site should feel free to contact him, either at the town office or by using the website’s “feedback form.”

“If anyone has anything that they want to get out there, we would definitely like to have that,” he said.  “If there is someone who would like to do articles, or anything that has to do with the town, we would be happy to use it.”

Holmes stated that he is especially interested in posting historical and tourism information.

Holmes does hope that local residents will find the site useful, and make regular visits to it.  He is looking forward to the public’s reaction to the site, and wants to work with them to make the site the best that it can possibly be.  After all, he said, he is an adamant believer in the website’s motto: “Town of Buckfield — where good people live.”