Park County is dropping its plans for a $36,371 overhaul of the county’s website.

“[We] saw the error in our ways,” deadpanned Commissioner Lee Livingston at last week’s meeting.

Instead of hiring an outside vendor for a pricey redesign, commissioners unanimously voted to have the county’s IT department make some more modest tweaks and upgrades.

“In the IT crew’s mind, and mine as well, we can do an awful lot to the site we have ourselves, without spending very much money at all,” said county CIO Mike Conners, adding that, “With the political and budget climate being what it is, that might be easier for everybody to swallow all the way around.”

Commissioner Jake Fulkerson had asked his colleagues to reconsider their decision on Jan. 21 after learning that other local governments have paid substantially less for their sites and after “getting bashed right and left” by citizens.

Fulkerson suggested that, by building a request for proposals that sought many features, the county had wound up seeking a “turbo Cadillac” model.

“The only ones that could supply those wants were these high-dollar
outfits,” Fulkerson said. “So guess what? We got what we asked for.”

The Kansas-based company CivicPlus came in as the low-bidder and the only one of six proposals to meet all of the county’s requirements; Conners has said the county’s RFP had been patterned off a CivicPlus template.

Commissioners had budgeted $20,000 for the work, but, in December, were willing to spend $16,000 extra on the initial redesign. They cited a desire to provide a better service to the public and save staff time and money.

“I see that as [extra money] a hell of a lot better spent than the recycling,” Commissioner Lloyd Thiel said at the time, referring to the $14,100 that the county is spending this year to boost recycling efforts in Powell, Cody and Meeteetse.

Commissioner Joe Tilden had been the only commissioner to oppose contracting with the firm CivicPlus on the new site last month, citing concerns about the new site being an expensive “want” amid a tight budget. Beyond the initial cost, the county was going to pay CivicPlus $5,625 a year for hosting and support — a substantial step up from what it currently pays to host the county-created site.

“Obviously my argument wasn’t good enough a few weeks ago, but I am glad that everybody’s reconsidering this,” Tilden quipped at last week’s meeting.

Fulkerson said he started having second thoughts when Powell City Administrator Zack Thorington asked whether a digit had been misplaced on the $36,000 price tag; that prompted Fulkerson to look into how much Cody Regional Health and the Cody school district had spent on their sites. He also described a public “outcry” over the proposal.

An individual going by the pseudonym “Billy Joe McGuffery” was particularly vocal in criticizing the “irreponsible and stupid” plans for a new site in emails to commissioners and on Facebook.

“If someone can please explain to me how this obvious want became a need, I would greatly appreciate it,” McGuffery wrote. “It smells of politicking and [butt] kissing.”

While McGuffery has remained anonymous, he or she has demonstrated an unusual amount of knowledge about county affairs — for instance, claiming to know that the assessor’s web page is the county’s most-trafficked webpage, with around 600 hits a month. (Conners said in an interview earlier this month that he does not know how much traffic the county site receives.)

Fulkerson said McGuffery’s comments were not a factor in his reconsideration, saying he gives anonymous comments “no credibility at all.” However, he said critical comments from other local residents on Facebook were more constructive.

He described the decision to reconsider as an example of the government being responsive to citizens.

“We went back, we did some more homework and we learned and we’re doing something different,” Fulkerson said. “I think that’s what elected officials are supposed to do.”

Commissioners had some discussion about issuing a pared-down request for website proposals that local and other vendors might be able to design more cheaply, but ultimately preferred to save even more money by sticking in-house.

“If we’re talking $10,000, $15,000, they’re still substantial amounts of money,” Conners said. He suggested his office could make tweaks and the county could “be happy with what we’ve got to get us by for another year or two or whatever until things improve and we want to go down the road of having all the bells and whistles.”

Optimizing the site for cellphone users by adopting a more responsive design and shoring up the site’s security are among the priorities for upgrades. Conners said the site could be given a facelift and improved with a couple thousand dollars worth of software that his department was going to buy anyway.

He also said only a few county leaders were particularly keen on a new site — and Fulkerson noted that some department pages are out of date.

“Let’s have some pride in our existing website,” Fulkerson said. “I mean, let’s encourage every department and every elected to go look at it right now and then stay involved.”