Christopher Kaiser

Officials: Town Website on Track for May Relaunch

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Town officials said this week that the re-launched municipal website is on track to go live in May. Designed to be more useful and interactive than what New Canaan currently has, the new site will live at the same Web address, newcanaan.info, and its features will include increased online bill pay functionality, a more robust “news” section, sign-ups for various kinds of alerts and tie-ins with town-operated social media accounts. Those in municipal government helping to design and train on the site are “engaged” and “excited,” New Canaan’s director of information technology, Chris Kaiser, said during Wednesday’s meeting of the Technology Advisory Committee. 

Discussions about the look and navigation of the site, as well as its color palette and featured photos are ongoing, Kaiser said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. And while all the data that lives on the town site’s thousands of Web pages is “migrated” over to the new one, “we are in a stopgap where anything going to the old newcanaan.info site is held” and will be part of the re-launch. Appointed in February 2018, the five-member Committee—Chairman Randy Dalia, Secretary Jeff Platt, Michael Abbott, Paul Pureka and Annamari Mikkola—has been studying the use of technology generally by the town government, with an eye on making it more efficient, cost-effective and convenient for residents.

Board of Selectmen

First Selectman: Town To Create New Canaan ‘Tourism and Economic Development Commission’

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New Canaan’s highest elected official on Tuesday said the town is close to creating a new appointed body that’s responsible for promoting local tourism and economic development. The Tourism and Economic Development Commission could include 10 to 12 people, according to First Selectman Kevin Moynihan. “Other towns have this kind of effort,” Moynihan told NewCanaanite.com during an interview moments after a Board of Selectmen meeting at Town Hall. “Ridgefield has an Economic Commission, and also in talking to the Glass House and others, we really need more of a tourism effort.”

The future commission first was mentioned during the selectmen meeting, as the Board voted 3-0 in favor of a $12,347 contract with a company—Revize Software, which describes itself as a government website specialist—to redesign and host the municipal website. 

Christopher Kaiser, the town’s IT director, said during the meeting that Revize had been chosen from among four or five vendors with “extensive municipal website design” experience and that the company seemed like a good fit. He added that it’s been a pleasure and a help to work with the recently appointed Technology Advisory Committee as well as consulting with the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce. 

Randy Dalia, chairman of the Technology Advisory Committee, said a newly designed municipal website is a “technical tool.”

“We still need better marketing, economic development, public relations,” Dalia said, voicing an assertion that the Committee has made before.

Government

‘Marketing’ New Canaan: Town Officials Eye More Regular, Robust Social Media Presence

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Municipal officials plan to tap local business and real estate leaders as they look for ways to use technologies such as social media and the town website to market New Canaan. Members of the Technology Advisory Committee said during a regular meeting Tuesday night that they would consult with the heads of the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce and New Canaan Board of Realtors in forming a set of recommendations. As it is, various municipal departments use Facebook and Twitter accounts differently and—with the exception of some, such as the New Canaan Police Department’s Twitter feed—post information at irregular intervals, according to committee member Annamari Mikkola. “If you want to market things, make people aware of things such as payment processing, we could certainly use it [ the town’s Facebook page] for town marketing,” she said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. “There are really no pictures,” Mikkola said.

Government

Town in Talks to Create Additional Commuter Parking Spaces Through ‘Boxcar’ App

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Town officials have been in talks for one month with a Cranford, N.J.-based company that recruits private property owners to offer parking to commuters via a mobile app, according to First Selectman Kevin Moynihan. Moynihan said last week that the company, called Boxcar, generally launches in towns that have train stations. “They go to the funeral homes, the churches, the supermarkets—everything in the area around the train station—and they ask them to put their excess parking spaces into a pool, which is an online app where people go and reserve those spaces,” he told members of the Technology Advisory Committee at their inaugural meeting, held May 8 at Town Hall. “And people charge $5, $6, $7 a day depending on where the space is.”

Moynihan said the board plans to meet with the company again this week and officials have already spoken with St. Aloysius Church about making 50 spaces in its Cherry Street lot available on the Boxcar app.

Government

New Technology Advisory Committee Elects Chairman, Secretary

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New Canaan’s Technology Advisory Committee, created by Board of Selectmen in February to identify and recommend technologies that would help town government run more efficiently, held its inaugural meeting Tuesday night at Town Hall to elect officers, discuss the status of information technology in the town and identify initial areas of focus. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan attended the meeting to facilitate the nominations for the committee’s chairman and secretary. The committee unanimously nominated and approved Randy Dalia, who previously served as vice president at IBM, as chairman and Paul Pureka, who previously served as regional manager for information systems at Citibank in London and Puerto Rico, as secretary. The remaining members of the committee are Mike Abbott, digital lead, Accenture Financial Services; Annamari Mikkola, freelance art director and producer; and Jeff Platt, vice president of global marketing at MasterCard. Following a brief discussion of the meeting schedule, Christopher Kaiser, the town’s director of information technology, shared the results of a survey taken of managers within municipal government about their current technological use and future needs.