Critic of New Township Website: It Cost Too Much

A township Democrat who was removed from Parsippany's transparency committee thinks the is too pricey.

Tom Wyka, who ran for congress in 2006 and 2008, thinks that Parsippany could have paid less than $22,000 a year for a municipal website that is even more transparent than the new one.

Rather than paying a webmaster for customizing a template site and updating it for $11,000 every six months, Wyka, an IT professional in the pharmaceutical industry, said he thinks the old site could have been updated for no more than $300 or $400 a month. The old webmaster was paid $75 an hour for posting updates, he said.

"You update the calendar a couple of times and put up some forms. And that's going to keep the new webmaster busy enough to justify paying as much as we'd pay for  part-time employee?'' said Wyka, who is a board member of the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government.

But the head of Alpha Dog Solutions, the Belleville firm that designed the site, said that although the township's site was  based on a template the company has used for other municipal sites, it was customized for Parsippany. He said the company gets as many as nine requests a day for updates from the township. It will also cover events about once a month and posts photos and text, company president Michael Melham said.

He said the Alpha Dog sites can save municipalities money because towns can earn credit from the state for a transparent, frequently updated site.  

Mayor James Barberio thinks the money was well spent. "People love how transparent it is,'' he said. "And we have 24/7 contact with the webmaster.''

But Wyka—who aknowledges the new site is an improvement over the last one—thinks it could have gone further.

He said it should have included a posting of the check register, so residents can see all of the checks that were written by the town.

In 2009, Wyka and Annelise Catanzaro, who ran unsuccesfully against Councilman John Cesaro that year, were appointed to a transparency committee by former Democratic Mayor Michael Luther.

They devoted much of their time to examining how the township's website could boost transparency, Wyka said.

But in the fall, the council passed a retroactive regulation stipulating that members of the comittee could only serve one year, which bounced Wyka and Catanzaro from the committee. They both had been appointed to three-year terms that hadn't expired.

"I thought that was underhanded,'' Wyka said.

But Barberio said he thought other appointees would better serve the township. "I think that would be more beneficial,'' said Barberio, who hasn't yet named their successor.

He also called Wyka "a bitter pill.''