Villa Park trustees discuss website redesign; staff outlines 16-week plan and $15,000 budgeted

On Oct. 13, 2025, the Village Board of Trustees of Villa Park discussed a planned redesign of the village website, with staff describing a reorganization of content, a 16-week approximate timeline and about $15,000 budgeted for next-year work.

Village Manager Rivas turned the presentation over to Dan McCann, the village human resources manager, and communications staffer Riley, who showed Civic Plus template examples used by nearby towns such as Lombard, Roselle and Lockport. "If it involves money, it's gonna be in the finance page," McCann said, describing a plan to move documents out of the site's existing "transparency" portal and place them under departmental or service pages so residents can find information more directly.

The redesign would replace the current department-driven navigation with a services approach, McCann said: police, fire and public works would appear as services with their own landing pages and quick links. McCann said the village will create a dedicated Human Resources page to house employee contracts, union contracts, temp-agency employment information and benefits materials; similarly, finance documents would be consolidated under a finance page and street repairs under public works. "If you know you're looking for a fire department thing, go to the fire department page, it's gonna be on that page," McCann said.

Riley presented screenshots and templates from Civic Plus and said the vendor will provide multiple color palettes and layouts. She said the vendor will import existing site content into a chosen template and staff will reorganize and edit pages before launch. "We are gonna be picking a template with Civic and they're gonna take all of our existing information and put it into that new template," Riley said, adding that some work will continue after the site goes live.

Staff said a roughly 16-week timeline would cover organizing, editing and template work, with some background drafting occurring before public updates. McCann said the village has approximately $15,000 budgeted for next year to support the development work and said some edits may be made in real time while larger transitions will be handled in phases.

Trustees suggested features and priorities. Trustee Sabri asked whether Villa Park could copy Lombard's drop-down services menus; Riley said Lombard uses Civic Plus and the village can create a similar layout. Trustee Constatos proposed a business directory to highlight local merchants and suggested coordination with the Chamber of Commerce; staff said they will consult the chamber because the chamber maintains some business listings. Trustee Kumar urged better homepage visibility for frequent tasks and recommended embedding social feeds so posts appear on the site’s front page. "Whatever's on social media should automatically port to the Facebook part of our home page," Kumar said. Trustee O'Fannon recommended a prominent social widget; O'Fannon added that embedded social content could allow visitors to scroll social posts on the homepage.

Other suggestions included clearer permit descriptions, an employee-recognition feature (staff suggested social media spotlights), and a focus group to test a near-final design. Staff proposed monthly or quarterly check-ins with department heads to keep content current after launch; Riley said she checks for updates frequently and will implement regular review cycles.

Staff also noted specific content work: updating police and fire pages to match the refreshed homepage style, adding staff photos and quick-contact links for board members, and consolidating duplicate documents scattered across the current site. McCann said the existing "transparency portal" contains many documents better suited to specific services and that consolidation should reduce the number of clicks residents must take to find items such as permits, payments or department forms.

The board moved to public comments after the website discussion; there were no public comments. A motion to adjourn was made and seconded; the meeting adjourned at approximately 6:28 p.m.

Next steps, as described in the meeting: staff will begin reorganizing content and work with Civic Plus designers on template options; departments will review pages for accuracy; staff will provide status updates as phases are completed. The presentation identified implementation as an in-house effort supported by Civic Plus's design and template services and constrained by the chosen vendor’s capabilities.