Your Tax Dollars At Work!

On April 19th, 2023, the Evans Town Board voted to spend $28,500 of your tax dollars to redesign the town’s website. [ Click Here! ]

THE PROS

• The town site URL is now townofevansny.gov.
• The home page looks very nice.
• The home page is not overloaded with too much information.
• The site has a meeting calendar [ Click Here ]
• The site has an events calendar [ Click Here ]

THE CONS

• There are several broken links & typos. At $28,500, there should have been more attention to detail.
• There is a meeting calendar & an events calendar. Both calendars should have links to the other calendar since site visitors might not notice there are two calendars.
• The supervisor’s page lists four events that start at 6:18 AM and end at 6:18 AM! It should not take 2+ months to fix these typos.
• At $28,500, the newsletter subscribers’ database should have been incorporated into the new design.
• After re-subscribing to the newsletter, I was redirected to an error page.
• The supervisor states [ Click Here ]: “It is my goal to foster relationships with the residents as well as the business community to keep the Town of Evans a great place to live, raise our families and grow our businesses. ”
  • Nota Bene: The supervisor’s news page still has “test” in the link! [ https://townofevansny.gov/news/test/ ]
  • If the town is suddenly “pro-business”:
    • Why not a page with business assistance programs?
    • Why not an “easy-to-find” link to the low-interest business loan program?
• Distressed / back tax properties are assigned to the Buffalo Erie Niagara Land Improvement Corporation.
  • Why isn’t information and links to available properties easy to find? ( I could not find a link)
• You still get “click fatigue” trying to find documents.
  • Putting links to documents on multi-levels of web pages is very 1990’s!
  • For $28,500, you would think documents would be sorted by date!
  • Zoom meeting link is not available for the 4-19-2023 meeting & others.
  • Documents should be in a searchable database.
  • Here is a sample database link to show how a search for “new website” would work: http://www.anytownusa.info/meetings_list.php?q=(MinutesText~contains~new%20website)&f=all

Depending on what you are looking for, the town’s new website may or may not make your task easier.

BELOW IS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW DOCUMENTS COULD BE STORED IN A SEARCHABLE DATABASE.
THE TOWN OF EVANS DID NOT USE THIS TECHNIQUE.

Here is a sample database link to show how a search for “new website” would work: http://www.anytownusa.info/meetings_list.php?q=(MinutesText~contains~new%20website)&f=all

The above link finds the 2023 resolution authorizing the website redesign.

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