The city of Chehalis will have a new website online by October that will increase focus on tourism and local businesses.
On Monday, the Chehalis City Council approved a $9,950 fee for website design and development and a $3,000 annual fee for hosting and maintenance as proposed by Aha Consulting Inc. of Lake Oswego, Ore.
“We need it to look professional and organized,” Chehalis City Clerk Judy Schave said.
Councilor Bob Spahr noted the website overhaul would be too much work for the city to undertake on its own.
The rest of the council unanimously agreed.
“This is like technology, if you don’t keep up with it you get stale,” Mayor Pro-Tem Dennis Dawes said of the website redesign.
The website redesign was recommended with the Chehalis Renaissance Plan.
Officials with the city of West Linn, Ore. — www.westlinnoregon.gov — highly recommended Aha Consulting, with a city manager assistant writing the firm “gets” municipal government by displaying information, public notices and other information in an easy to navigate manner.
West Linn reported a 42 percent increase in website visitation a year after Aha developed its new site.
Aha will host the Chehalis website with a Rackspace “cloud” in Texas and Oregon, 500 gigabyte bandwidth, daily backup, security upgrades, site monitoring and recovery, and around-the-clock customer support.
After three years the annual maintenance fee is negotiable and will most likely lower in cost like most technologies that have been in place for a while.
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Adam Pearson: (360) 807-8208
