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Lakeville panel advances CivicPlus website redesign with initial $10,000 deployment
Summary
The Town of Lakeville Technology Subcommittee reviewed a CivicPlus website redesign and recommended moving forward with an initial approximately $10,000 implementation within a $30,000 budget; members discussed features, a sandbox preview, and a working group to guide design and rollout.
The Town of Lakeville Technology Subcommittee on Aug. 12 agreed to advance a CivicPlus redesign of the town website, with committee members planning to execute an initial contract for roughly $10,000 of a $30,000 budgeted project.
Committee members said the proposed contract would bring an updated site architecture, improved back-end tools for town staff and a meeting-management module. Andrew Sukhart, the town administrator, described the initial scope as focused on functionality and support while holding optional add-ons — such as an online issue-reporting module sometimes called "ClickFix" — for later decisions.
The subcommittee’s discussion centered on three near-term priorities: preserving the town’s ability to manage its DNS, ensuring a sandbox or preview environment exists before launch, and deciding which optional features to include now versus later. Members said CivicPlus is offering promotional pricing that reduced the near-term cost to roughly $10,000; the overall project remains budgeted at $30,000.
Sukhart said the standard CivicPlus package being considered includes a meeting-management feature and document hosting and that a chatbot option was included in the first-year estimate. Committee members asked for clarification about a ‘‘redesign fee’’ that CivicPlus offers: pay a modest amount now to avoid a larger redesign charge in about four years. The committee discussed whether to prepay that fee to reduce future costs.
Members asked for a preview environment so the committee and staff can review a proposed site before it goes live. Emily (staff member working on the proposal) said the vendor typically provides a sandbox during the implementation phase. The committee agreed to form a small working group to review visual themes and functionality; Jim Barth volunteered to represent the technology committee on that group.
Next steps identified by the subcommittee include (1) obtaining a formal quote and implementation timeline from CivicPlus, (2) confirming the sandbox capability and design timeline, and (3) convening the working group for theme and content decisions. The committee agreed the remaining optional features (newsletters, incident-report modules, larger catalogs) could be postponed if they are not judged essential during the initial rollout.
A final contract decision will follow vendor clarifications and the working group’s recommendations.
