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ACT committee leans against .gov switch, recommends .org forwarder; organizational chart update planned
Summary
After a technical review, committee IT staff recommended against switching the borough's long-running west-chester.com domain to .gov because of integration costs and risk; members supported registering or forwarding a .org address and asked that the domain discussion go to full council. The committee also asked staff to prepare an updated organizational chart for public posting.
The ACT Committee reviewed whether the borough should change its long-standing web identity from its current domain to a government (.gov) or non-profit (.org) suffix.
Bill (IT) presented a historical and technical review, noting that the borough website and many integrated services have relied on the west‑chester.com domain for roughly 30 years. He said moving to a .gov domain would require reconfiguration of single sign-on, email and many cloud integrations, could cause downtime during reconfiguration, and likely would incur vendor charges for rework. He recommended registering west‑chester.org and using it as a forwarder to the existing site as a lower-cost option.
Members raised cost, integration risk and public-trust considerations and recorded an informal vote opposed to moving to a .gov domain (transcript records a 2–1 result against immediate migration). The group agreed the topic should be brought to full council for further discussion and asked that Bill’s PowerPoint be shared with the workgroup. On the organizational chart, members noted the borough's published chart was dated (2019), supported drafting a clearer public-facing chart that identifies department heads and reporting lines, and directed staff to prepare a draft for the next month.
What happens next: the domain question will go to full council with staff recommendations and supporting materials; staff will prepare an updated organizational chart for ACT committee review.
