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Simsbury board previews beta town website, asks for public testing and clearer contact tools
Summary
Town staff showed a CivicPlus beta of a redesigned Simsbury website with an expanded calendar, ADA features and a public bug-report form. Selectmen pressed staff on search/archival access, board contact links and a plan to keep agendas current; staff said the beta will be public in mid‑December and remain through mid‑January for feedback.
Town staff demonstrated a CivicPlus beta of the new Simsbury website during the Dec. 15 Board of Selectmen meeting and asked residents to help test it before a final launch in mid‑January. Acting town manager Tom Fitzgerald and IT staff said the redesign emphasizes a larger, searchable calendar, direct links to meeting videos and a feedback form for reporting bugs.
Fitzgerald said the beta site will be linked from the town’s current site so residents can try it and submit corrections. “Members of the public can click on here, and there is a form. If you find something that is wrong or needs fixing … the IT department is constantly receiving those to then go in and work with the developer to fix it,” staff said during the presentation.
Board members focused on searchability and ease of finding key contacts. Selectman Kevin asked whether the site’s search will find older agendas and whether contact details for boards and departments will be easy to reach; the presenter said most department pages will show a primary contact at the top and that a staff directory will be available. Several selectmen raised a template limitation that provides six large quick‑access buttons, and asked whether the site could surface frequently used items more efficiently on both desktop and mobile.
On accessibility, staff highlighted an AudioEye integration for ADA compliance and a live “what‑you‑see‑is‑what‑you‑get” editor to ease content updates. IT staff committed to training department liaisons to maintain pages and to keep the beta site live until mid‑January so public comments can be incorporated before the official launch.
The board asked staff to ensure: (1) the public can find archives and older agendas via robust search; (2) a straightforward way exists to contact boards and commissions; (3) the calendar is reliably updated when departments file changes. Staff agreed to follow up on the search behavior for specific older items and to consider keeping the old site available as a fallback during the transition.
The board did not take a formal vote on the website itself at the Dec. 15 meeting; staff said a news item and a link to the beta would be posted the next morning and that they will compile reported issues for the developer.
