By JONATHAN SNYDER
After months of development, Bluffton’s new website was released to the public midday Tuesday.
The new website, located at the same blufftonindiana.net address, comes as part of a software overhaul for the city, which gives the public an easier time paying utilities online, address certain concerns and eventually allow them to see city meetings in one place online.
Common Council member Scott Mentzer stated that a lot of the new software will be rolled out at different times. While the website was launched earlier this week, some aspects of the software are still in the “soft launch” phase, meaning that it will be tested internally by the city to check for any issues before public release.
One such example is the “see click fix” feature, otherwise known as 311, which allows the public to report any issues, such as animal control problems or missed trash pickups, to the city. The service will also have a notification feature, which will keep the citizen posted on what actions the city has taken to resolve the issue. Other components will be rolled out at a later date, like the livestreaming of city meetings, which is required by the state in 2025.
“Not quite sure when we’ll move from the soft launch to the hard launch,” Mentzer said. “But I would suspect, I’m hoping, inside another month we get through the soft launch portion of that.”
The new software will also impact developers who wish to build certain projects and buildings. After some of the public software is tested, the city will eventually add another piece that will allow developers to start the permitting process online, automatically move the process to the next board or committee once approved and update the developer on where their project stands.
“One of the feedbacks that we’ve gotten from developers is that the city processes are a little clunky,” Mentzer said. “They don’t know quite know where projects stand or what the status of stuff is. The software moves the project to the right individuals, and the person who has applied for the project gets notifications along the way and can see where the project advances.”
While the public will have an easier time finding what they need from the new website, the other software portions like the see click fix feature will help the city streamline its own processes. The feature hopes to cut down on the phone traffic into the wrong offices and send issues directly to the correct department heads via automatic emails. IT Director Karen Morris, who worked with contracted developer CivicPlus on the software, stated that this should eliminate issues going to people that may not be able to help.
“We take phone calls, people will put a note on a piece of paper and handed off to somebody else,” Morris said. “And so I think that 311 (see click fix) piece … just bringing it to the department heads and saying, ‘Hey, we have an opportunity to streamline this process.’ I think the 311 piece was the biggest opportunity for change that we have.”
A portion of the new website is dedicated to city news. Morris stated that news flashes for issues like water main breaks or event information are easily accessible from the home page. The new layout also reduced the amount of scrolling needed to find certain departments, with government boards, departments, information for residents and information for businesses having their own separate tabs on the home page. This, along with a search feature, will hopefully avoid frustration when searching for certain pieces in the website.
“The (old) format was a little difficult to navigate in places and so we really tried to streamline the look and feel of the new menus,” Morris said. “So we’ve just tried to better organize where the data and information is. So hopefully that will be a huge benefit to visitors of the website.”
The website could also have a different look in the next few months, depending on the results of the city marketing plan. Mentzer stated that the new logos and colors unveiled in the plan could cause the website to take on some different content, but for the immediate future the website will maintain its look.
CivicPlus’s implementation team will stay on as a consultant for the city for two to three weeks while the city tests the new software, after which CivicPlus’s support team will be available for the city to contact, according to Morris. Mentzer said that CivicPlus’s past experience with municipalities gives them a much more professional insight into ways the city could use their software.
“They (CivicPlus) see these problems in every client they have,” Mentzer said. “These are the problems that they’re solving every day, versus a website developer, which may be working with a bakery one day and a contractor the next day.”
Mentzer also noted that a new software launch will always have some issues that are not working as intended. Mentzer encouraged the public to reach out if they see any issues with features or if the website is tough to navigate in areas.
“User feedback is important,” Mentzer said. “We encourage them to reach out to the city and let us know about it. Hopefully it’ll be easy to do that. That’s part of the point of the new website is to make it easier to communicate with city government.”
jonathan@news-banner.com
