Oak Creek council approves Civic Plus website overhaul to modernize services and meet ADA obligations

The Oak Creek Common Council voted Dec. 16 to move forward with a Civic Plus multi‑site website redevelopment intended to modernize the city’s online services and meet upcoming ADA standards. City staff recommended building three sites (oakcreekwi.gov, the library site and the city’s tourism site) and adding modules for web accessibility, process automation and forms.

Marcia, marketing and public relations lead for the project, told the council the proposal would address aging infrastructure and usability problems that force residents to rely on search engines rather than the city site. "Civic Plus has a high degree of municipal experience. Their CMS capabilities are much more intuitive with drag and drop," Marcia said. She presented an initial implementation cost of $89,613.47 and estimated annual services at about $42,500 (subject to a phased 5% uplift after year two under the vendor’s pricing structure). The project was funded through the city’s CIP request; staff noted the cost split for the initial implementation was budgeted at 70% city and 30% tourism commission support.

Council members pressed staff on how success would be measured. Marcia said the city plans to add heat‑mapping and other analytics to track user flows and to measure efficiency gains when manual processes — for example, a multi‑day dog‑license workflow — are converted to online forms and automation. Staff also said they expect to retire some existing per‑user tools (notably a JotForm subscription) and broaden access to forms for more departments.

Councilors asked about payments, server load and the lift to internal staff. Marcia explained Civic Plus supports embedded payment if finance signs off and said marketing and departmental staff will share project responsibilities; the city expects a measurable operational lift during implementation but not major server upgrades. The council also discussed phasing options to spread operating costs into future budgets.

The council moved to approve the resolution to proceed with Civic Plus and adopted the measure by roll call. Implementation next steps include finalizing the scope of work, executing the contract and establishing timelines with departments for content migration and testing. Staff said ADA compliance work is a priority because new accessibility standards take effect in 2027.

— Reporting in this article is based on council presentations and roll‑call action at the Dec. 16, 2025 Oak Creek Common Council meeting.