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After Pleasanton city staff gave a presentation on the city’s new website during last week’s City Council meeting, some members of dais pointed out issues with the email functionality that staff said they would try to address soon.
Those issues were specifically regarding residents’ ability to mass email the council regarding an upcoming council meeting item, emails not coming through and the fact councilmembers were not able to respond to resident emails.
“I kept wondering where all our comments were,” Councilmember Julie Testa said during the Dec. 5 council meeting. “They were nowhere to be found. I hadn’t had a comment from a community member since Nov. 17. I know that’s not real.”
On Nov. 16, the city launched its new website, which was created with the help of Ogden Costa Creative Group, a Pleasanton-based design company. The company was hired for consulting services from April through November for website development — the total design and implementation cost to create the new website was $134,000, which was budgeted in the city’s general fund.
Sharon Petrehn, management analyst for the city, told the council during her presentation that since its launch, the new website has already been generating a lot of positive feedback from several cities who have reached out to Pleasanton for advice on creating a new website.
She also went over how the update to the website at www.cityofpleasantonca.gov was an effort aligned with the ONE Pleasanton (the city’s five-year strategic plan) goal of organizational effectiveness and that updating the website was previously identified as a priority in the City Council’s work plan.
Apart from making it easier for residents to search for things related to the city, Petrehn said other additional key features of the website update includes a better search feature; a quick link bar; a “How Do I” feature meant to improve navigation within the website; and an integrated agenda management system to make it easier for residents to access council meeting information.
She also said the website is mobile- and tablet-friendly and that there are a number of accessibility features for residents who speak multiple languages or have any other impairment.
“We really want this information to be easy for people (to access) … We feel like that’s been delivered,” Petrehn said.
However, while all the councilmembers had mostly positive feedback on the look and overall functionality of the new website, Testa and Mayor Karla Brown made the initial remarks on the new change in the email system that has been causing some issues.
“I got a text first from one resident that said ‘Julie, I tried to send an email to the council. Could you tell me if you received it … I don’t think it went through’ and sure enough, it had not gone through,” Testa said.
In the past, residents were able to email all the members of the council and the city by using the email address citycouncil@cityofpleasantonca.gov, which is now not operational. Instead, the new website separates every council member’s email addresses, meaning each resident now has to copy and paste into one email or they have to send their emails to each address separately.
Testa added that apart from older residents telling her they were confused on the new email system, she said another resident tried sending Testa a direct email and when she tried responding to that resident, her response never got sent.
“Days passed, I thought that person would be pleased they got that reply. Then I got a notice from our IT department that you can’t reply to emails. So it isn’t user-friendly,” Testa said regarding the new email system.
Mayor Karla Brown also said that just a couple of hours before that night’s meeting, she had 33 pages worth of emails that she didn’t have the ability to respond back to, which Testa said she experienced as well.
“We got I would say 25 or 30 emails at … 1:30 p.m. today,” Testa added. “We’re pretty busy before meeting and reading all those makes it tough.”
City Manager Gerry Beaudin said that while staff would work on a follow-up by the end of the week on how the city will “continue to offer easy accessible contact with the City Council,” he also said there was a good reason why the new email system was set up that way.
Beaudin said that when residents used the mass email address to bring up issues like water leaks and downed tree branches, it made it harder for staff to separate those from comments regarding agendized council meeting items in order to enter those into the public record.
That’s why he said the new website helps in directing residents on where to send those specific requests unrelated to the council meetings.
“When those requests come in, the way that the new website is designed, you can either use a mobile app, or you can be on the website and you can go directly to the department and send that request, so that it’s not a game of telephone around solving problems in our community,” Beaudin said.
He also said that while the mass email address is not operational, people who email it do get an automated response telling residents different ways to engage the council and pointing them to departments where they can voice their concerns.
Regardless, other council members reiterated that the city needs to make the emailing process more user friendly and ensure they receive residents’ emails and are able to respond to those emails.
“We do need to make it as easy as possible for the public to email us and we need the ability to respond and the timely manner in which we get the emails is important,” Councilmember Valerie Arkin said. “I hope we can work on that and make some adjustments so that that will work out for us.”
