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Tonopah staff review CivicPlus website proposal; tourism rep urges keeping tonopahnevada.com
Summary
At a budget workshop, staff and a vendor reviewed a proposal to migrate the town website to Civic Plus, citing improved security, backups and easier content updates; tourism representative Bethany Thompson asked that tourism content remain on tonopahnevada.com and sought continued support for event postings.
Tonopah staff and a vendor described a plan to move the town’s government content to Civic Plus at a workshop, emphasizing faster updates, built-in notifications and stronger data backups while tourism representatives urged keeping the town’s tourism site separate.
Jordan Karnes, the vendor representative, told the board his company works with many local governments and sells a content-management system designed for municipal staff. “We are a firm that works specifically with local government. We have over 6,000 website customers from towns very, very small to very large,” Karnes said, and he described features meant to make routine updates easier: drag-and-drop editing, an agendas-and-minutes section and a Notify Me alert system for residents.
Staff walked the board through what would change for residents and staff. A town presenter said Civic Plus “guarantees they have our backup” and that restoration could occur “within 8 hours” if a site problem occurred; the vendor also described U.S.-based tech support and a dedicated customer-success manager.
Bethany Thompson, who spoke “from the perspective of tourism,” urged the board to let tourism keep its current public-facing site. “So it would be ideal… that we stay toneuponnevada.com, and then all of the government stuff go to a different domain of, like, toneuponnevada.gov,” Thompson said, noting that she frequently relies on the current vendor to upload many event flyers and would need training and support if the town changed platforms.
Karnes gave cost details for the premium package the vendor recommended: a one-time migration and build fee of $1,700, an annual software/hosting/license fee of about $5,772 for the premium service, and an optional $425-per-year design-revamp add-on. The vendor noted that the federal General Services Administration (GSA) controls assignment of .gov domains and that the town would need to apply to the GSA to obtain a .gov address.
Board members did not vote. Staff repeatedly said the choice of contractor and the decision on whether tourism content remains on the existing site would be left to the board for a later meeting. The vendor offered to migrate content, train up to a dozen staff members at no additional cost and run the town’s Notify Me subscriptions if the board decides to proceed.
