KENSINGTON – The Town of Kensington has a new virtual front door and Geoff Baker is rolling out the welcome mat.
Baker, chief administrative officer for the town, told the Journal Pioneer on Thursday that the community launched its new website a couple of weeks ago and the response has been positive, so far.
It’s definitely an improvement over the previous incarnation of the website, said Baker.
“Functionally the website was hard to navigate around. It was hard to find information,” he said.
“We really wanted to tear it down to something simple, something that was easy to navigate through, and also something that had a fresh look,” he added.
The town contracted Charlottetown-based Revolution Media to update the site.
This version of the town’s online extension offers several advantages to residents, explained Baker.
With the old website the town had to actually call the page builders if they wanted to make anything more than minor changes to the page.
With the new site, town staff has a lot of control over what and when items are posted.
This should allow for more up to date and timely information being put online.
Residents are also now able to pay their utility bills online.
The Community Gardens, which the town took ownership of late last year, has also been integrated. So a complete schedule, and list of fees is now available online.
Residents can now also find some municipal forms, such as building permits, online, instead of having to go to city hall.
But Baker did offer one caveat regarding the new site.
The town is limited by staffing levels as to how much time it can devote to the website.
So while items will be posted in a timely matter, residents should not expect the instantaneousness that might be offered by larger communities, he said.
“I don’t think we do as good at it as we could. I think we certainly still have improvement (to do) as far as that’s concerned. But from our perspective it’s about finding staff resources to dedicate to that on a regular basis,” he said.
“I think websites are continuously works in process, and you’re always trying to improve the way you do things,” he said.
The new site can be viewed online at www.kensington.ca
