The storms gave city officials the opportunity to test the effectiveness of a new tool -- a constantly updated, 24-hour window into Dania Beach news, information and city services.
Dania Beach officials contracted CivicPlus to help launch the new Web site.
The city's new Web site management system requires a basic knowledge of Microsoft Word to create sophisticated, functional Web pages. With the ability to add, delete and update information online at any time, officials can tailor the site to meet the community's needs while controlling its evolution in a fiscally responsible manner.
The Web site gave Dania Beach officials peace of mind during the recent natural disasters that rocked Florida. Because the Web server is located in Kansas, far from the storm-ravaged shores of Florida, the Dania Beach Web site remained up and running through each of the four hurricanes that slammed into the Florida coast.
Luckily, the century-old community of Dania Beach sustained only minor damage during the storms, losing power for four hours at City Hall during Hurricane Frances, said Joe Husosky, a technical support analyst for the city.
"The people at CivicPlus called us and offered to do updates to the Web site over the phone if we needed it," Husosky said.
The Dania Beach homepage includes a "news flash" area updating citizens on the latest hurricane information, a link to maps of local shelters, a phone number and links to the Broward County hurricane preparedness center, and other useful information.
"Since we weren't actually projected to be in the path of the hurricanes, we didn't want to heighten the hysteria, but we wanted to be prudent also so anyone who was concerned did have an avenue to find hurricane information," Husosky said. The site also served to minimize the number of phone calls to City Hall, he said, since out-of-town visitors had an easy way to learn about conditions in Dania Beach via the Internet.
Now that the storms have passed, visitors have many other reasons to visit the site. They can learn about current weather conditions (a balmy 81 degrees Fahrenheit on a recent October day), peruse a calendar of community events and find information on the 2005 election for three city commission seats.
Sign up to be notified via e-mail about job openings and bid postings for the city's Parks & Recreation, Public Services and Finance departments. The site also answers frequently asked questions about all sorts of municipal departments and services, such as water and utilities.
City officials recently got a lesson in Web site accuracy, while also learning about the popularity of their new Internet tool.
"We found out just how much the Web site is being used when at a recent budget meeting, most of the people showed up early because the time was listed on the site incorrectly. All the printed material had the correct time, but apparently most people got their information off the Web," Husosky said. "This really gave a good but embarrassing example of just how much people already depend on it."
