I don't believe it is a "transparency in Government" . The Mayor duty was to invite other Web developers and ask for qualification and prices.

Actually, I fail to see what is so special about this site that the Mayor couldn't just pay someone $300 per month to do it. Outside of some flash animations and some nice computer generated artwork, the site looks pretty standard & simple to me. There are a bunch of sidebars with links to other pages and PDF files, which we had on the old site. It's nice that these new pages and new PDF's will be added/updated quickly, but it can't possibly take so long (or be so complicated) that we need to pay those updating it over $1,800 per month for doing so. These days, adding pages, files, photos and videos to a website just isn't that tough of a process if you have a moderately good idea of what you're doing; you don't need a computer science degree or any big qualification.

Don't get me wrong, I like the new site much better than the old one; it's much easier to use and has more information. However, it is not worth that much money. When the Mayor says Alpha Dog specializes in municipal websites, I'd really like for him to elaborate on what he means. Unless there are a slew of new features we don't yet know about, it seems that Alpha Dog's special skills are actually quite common.

With all due respect -- website design has no correlation to brain surgery and seeking out a specialist. There are tons of companies out there dying for business. Please note that I do like the website over the old one. However, the cost is still substantially higher than what most design shops will charge especially since it appears to be based on modified tempate. What concerns me most is that no research was done and only one firm was consulted. As we are constantly talking about budget difficulties -- any savings is a good thing.

Also, in the spirit of transparency, I'd like to see videos of the Town Council meetings put up on the website. I don't know if this is in the Mayor's plans or not, but since they are currently being recorded and shown on TV, the full meetings should be able to go online with no additional cost to the taxpayers.

"I had a vision of transparency in government, and that's reflected by this site." I think he also had a vision of seeing his face and name all over the front page. The montage behind the "Mayor's Action Center" is something!

I also like the new site over the new one, and I hope this is just the beginning of making more detailed information available to residents. My experience tells me we are absolutely overpaying for it and it's disappointing that there wasn't, at the very least, a bid process for it.

I'm a web developer myself. I've done a lot of work for corporations and municipalities so I have knowledge of the costs involved with running high-volume business and public sites. Anyone thinking they can pay a student or a freelancer $300 and end up with a quality dynamic website capable of handling the myriad of tasks the town's new site will be handling is woefully uninformed. To put 22k a year in perspective... GE's web development contract in the 90's to a small NJ firm that I was a part of was for over 20 million dollars a year for their main site (not much larger than Parsippany's now) and a few sub-sites based off of the same template as the main site. That was in the 90's, costs have only gone up since.

Its a common assumption that anyone who knows HTML and Photoshop can build a great website but that isn't the way of things. Just looking at the town site now I see an ASP.net environment (very likely means a custom content managment system behind the scenes and custom scripting on many pages), AJAX, custom Javascript, custom graphics, various interactive elements, and up-to-date news and info (which means real humans posting content regularly). Development for a site like this requires a highly skilled team managing aspects of site building that I doubt anyone who thinks web-sites cost $300 has even heard of.

I encourage people to call any reputable web firm and ask for a site with Parsippany's features for $300, just don't take their laughter personally.

David, I'm glad that an expert is on the subject is commenting here to provide this information, but I don't think the question is whether or not the site is worth $22,000. I'm sure it is. The question I have is whether or not we need a $22,000 site to achieve the goal of transparency. Is there really a need for custom scripting? And custom graphics? Will "standard" Javascript alone not do? With the exception of the up-to-date news and info, which I think everyone would agree is a plus, I can't wrap my head around the need for (what I perceive as) bells and whistles to achieve transparency.

I realize this post may come off as a bit sarcastic, but it isn't meant to be. When I think "transparency", I think posting documents online, which I believe can be done without custom anything. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I just don't see any need for high-tech specifications you've mentioned. Thanks.

Unsure of assumption that cost of website development has gone up in price as the amount of competition has grown significantly since the 90's. Previous post in another article - found prices to significantly range although not in the 20 Million Range for a Municipality. Regardless, my issue is that there was only one bid -- how is it possible to know that there couldn't have been any savings. Where is the research and the process that should have been followed? Again - when there is constant talk about cuts to services in our town (i.e. Fall Festival, Garbage Pickup, etc...) -- why aren't savings being sought out.

What a corporation like GE paid for a website two decades ago has no bearing on this discussion. IT has changed a great deal, and the amount of money corporations threw at IT before Y2K was staggering. Of course there is a content management system behind this site which is precisely why websites don't cost nearly as much as your ancient examples. And this is not a custom site - have you seen www.lodi-nj.org? This is a template, plug Parsippany's info in. Regardless of what the initial costs are, contracting for $1800/month to make updates to this site is outrageous - it equates to a part time job. Parsippany's former agreement was based on hourly work - pay for what gets done as it gets done.

Even if you disagree with everything I've said above, Mr. Kreitman is right - at the very least the mayor should have considered more than one option or put this out to bid. Things like our parades, concerts, fall festival are all at risk, things that make it great to live in Parsippany. To blindly hand $22k over without researching the decision is irresponsible.