Politics & Government

O'Neil: City Website User-Friendly, Contains More Information

Acting City Manager Susanna Niermann O'Neil said Cleveland Heights plans to continue to enhance the new city website.

About a month ago, the new Cleveland Heights .

The redesigned site is easier to navigate and contains more information, said Susanna Niermann O'Neil, acting city manager of Cleveland Heights.

"We want residents to be able to find out as much information as they possibly can from the website," O'Neil said.

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One of O'Neil's favorite features is the FAQ section where residents can browse questions and answers organized by categories such as "community center," "economic development" or "Office on Aging."

And the homepage features subsites for Cain Park, the Parks and Recreation Department and the Cleveland Heights Police Department.

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The site allows residents to register for recreation programs and post events on the city's calendar, among other interactive features.

O'Neil said the site will always be a "work in progress."

"We're just going to keep enhancing it," she said. "I want suggestions from people because it's never going to be finished."

More photos will be added to the homepage, for example, once the site is able to feature more than just panoramic photographs.

She wants it to provide information for not just Cleveland Heights folks, but "the guy in Iowa" who is considering moving here.

The makeover for clevelandheights.com has been in the works since the city hired Vision Internet to . The site was supposed to be unveiled last fall but because the company wanted to add more interactive features, Mayor Ed Kelley said in November.

O'Neil said the final cost of the site and subsites was about $48,000, which included and tech support. The city will also pay $250 a month for hosting services for a one-year term. If the city should renew the hosting fees, they will increase 5 percent each year, according to council documents.

Vision Internet, based in Santa Monica, CA, specializes in developing government sites, according to its website, and in the past 15 years has created 400 sites for small towns and big cities.

The company was one of four invited to do an on-site presentation out of 15 proposals the city received, according to council documents.

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