Aldermen approved a request for proposal last night for development of the new City of Jacksonville website.
The new website was discussed during last week’s Finance Committee, and the committee brought the RFP suggestion to the full council last night. Jacksonvilleil.com hasn’t been updated in eight years, according to Finance Committee Chairman Don Cook.
City council members gave the green light to seek bids from developers, but not before expressing concerns about who might get a shot at it.
Alderwoman Marcy Patterson suggested there were two people based in St. Louis who are from Jacksonville who could get the job done; other alderman want the site to be developed by someone local.
Jacksonville Mayor Andy Ezard says the website committee has worked very hard on implementing a process for requesting RFPs for potential vendors.
“We found there’s many national agents that do these type of website designs that spend a lot of time on evaluating other cities’ sites. National is one direction to go, but we also want to make sure we let the folks that are in town and in our region, to give them a fair shot, too, at that,” Ezard says.
“It’s just very important if there’s somebody that meets all the criteria that is local in this region, I would really hope that they would go out for this. We just want to get the best product possible to make a user-friendly website for the City of Jacksonville,” he adds.
The new site could go up by next summer.
Also last night, a tentative date of November 3rd at 2 p-m was announced for the groundbreaking of the city’s new water treatment plant on Hardin Avenue. There will be a meeting tonight from 6 to 7 p-m at 862 Hardin for area residents to get information on what to expect during the plant’s construction, according to alderman Mike Wankel.
“We want to have a little informational meeting, especially for the neighborhood that is going to be directly right around the new water treatment plant there on Hardin, so we can invite them in, answer any questions that they may have and provide them with information about construction before it actually starts happening,” says Wankel.
Other information includes how the city plans to operate the plant after construction and to provide conceptual rendering of what it will look like when it’s completed.
Aldermen approved the purchase of a new sludge pump for the Wastewater Treatment Plant at a cost of $25,383 and the first reading of re-zoning requests for property at 767 South West and 228 West Walnut.