http://www.ci.dunbarton.nh.us

Copyright © 1996 Prancin’ Enterprises, Inc.

A Web site for the Town of Dunbarton would be a first step at bringing Dunbarton onto the "Information Super Highway". It would allow residents to find out the latest information about the town (a change in town officers, for example) and in contrast would allow the town to disseminate information more frequently than the town’s Annual Report does. The Web site would also be accessible 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, and would allow people who can not always get to Town Hall or make a particular committee meeting (for example) to get the information more easily.

Virtually anything could be published on the Dunbarton Web site but particular ideas that may be useful include:

• Basic town information, for example: the list of town officers, town office hours, town telephone numbers, etc.
• Information about the town committees, commissions, and other official town organizations.
• Town events: recent ones that come to mind are the Fire Department’s cook out this past summer, the annual Christmas tree lighting, and the Recreation Committee’s activities.
• Town ordinances, regulations, and other official documentation.
• A section for Town Notices that could contain the same information posted on the town’s bulletin board outside of the Town Hall.
• Voter registration information and local election results.
• A town chat board where residents could post ideas and other residents could reply to those ideas.
• Patricia Mann currently writes a column for the Goffstown News — perhaps the publishers of the Goffstown News would be willing to let Patricia’s column appear on the Dunbarton Web Page as well.
• There is a lot of other information that could appear on the Web site limited only by available time to convert the information to Web format and the creativity of the people that would like to post information on the site.

In addition to information that can be directly published on the Dunbarton Web site, there are also other Web sites that exist that in turn could "point" to the Dunbarton site. For example, the state of New Hampshire runs an official Web site called WEBSTER which could point to the information in the Dunbarton Web site and a company named Excite! publishes a Web site called City.Net which points to Web sites about cities and towns around the world.

There are a lot of reasons for having these "reverse" links to the Dunbarton Web site. People may be considering a move to town and would like more information on Dunbarton. People may just be interested in how a small town like Dunbarton operates in comparison to other towns/cities in the rest of New Hampshire, the U.S., or perhaps other countries in the world.

In order for the Dunbarton Web site files to be resident on the Web (and, therefore, available to people who access the Web) the files must be moved to a host that is connected to the Internet. There are two ways this can be done:

1. The Town of Dunbarton could buy a PC to act as a server on the Web and get a direct connection for this host on the Internet but this is a relatively expensive solution.
1. The Dunbarton Web Site can be made a Virtual Web Site which simply means that the Web site resides on a host computer that is already connected to the Internet.

This proposal recommends that the Dunbarton Web site be created as a Virtual Web site. A direct connection to the Internet will not even be considered in this document due to the cost constraints involved, although the town may at some time want to consider this option. See the recommendation on forming a Town Technology Committee later in this document).

The initial set of files that would comprise the Dunbarton Web Site would have to be placed on the Dunbarton Virtual Web site. Prancin’ Enterprises is willing to do this work for free and to ensure that the site operates properly. Prancin’ Enterprises is also willing to help train town personnel on how to best prepare information for the Web. It is also recommended that the school be encouraged to have students prepare information for the Web, either as class projects or extracurricular activities.

In order for the Dunbarton Web site to be built and placed on the Internet, small capital investments would have to be made and a monthly budget would have to be established for the continual running of the site.

The vendors involved in the following estimates are:

• The Internet Access Company (TIAC) — Provider of Internet access/services.
• Prancin’ Enterprises — Designs and hosts Web sites.

The figures quoted below are provided for estimating purposes only. If the town so chooses, estimates from other Internet service providers will be obtained for comparison purposes.

To initially create and set-up the Dunbarton Web site, the following one-time charges would be incurred:

1. The Dunbarton domain name must be registered.
1. A Virtual Web Site must be established with an ISP to contain the Web site files.
1. An ISP account must be established for the Dunbarton WebMaster so that the Web files can be modified and updated as needed.
1. The Web site must be initially populated with the Web files about Dunbarton.

Once these one-time activities have been performed then there are monthly fees associated with maintaining the Web site.

The prototype Dunbarton Web site contains a listing of all of the (known) business that reside in Dunbarton. This business directory is a reference for town residents and not a place for free advertising. If this section remains it is highly recommended, and Prancin’ Enterprises would seek an agreement with the town, that the information for each business that is listed at no charge consists of only the following information:

• Contact name(s) for the business,
• One-sentence describing the nature of the business.
• The telephone number of the business,
• The Postal Address of the business,
• The e-mail address for the business (if they have one), and
• The Web address for the business (if they have one).

If a business would like to have its own customized Web site created for it then the business should contact a vendor of such services. To be frank, Prancin’ Enterprises will be aggressively contacting those businesses in town that do not yet have a Web site but would like to have one. The point is that the Town of Dunbarton probably should not be in the business of creating Web sites for businesses because a computer staff and specialized Web skills would be needed for this.

For the Dunbarton Web site to be successful in the long-term it is recommended that a Town Technology Committee be established to over-see such things as the Dunbarton Web site and to perhaps follow-up with recommendations on how to network all of the town’s computers to allow easy information sharing. Prancin’ Enterprises would be more than willing to act in a consultancy basis to help the town with these possible goals.

The Technology Committee should consist of at least four people:

• Chairman — to oversee the budget and to anticipate any increase in charges by the ISP as well as report to the selectmen.
• WebMaster — to oversee the operation of the Dunbarton Web site and to keep it up-to-date.
• Alternate WebMaster — to work with the WebMaster and be able to perform the duties of the WebMaster as needed.
• School Technology Committee chair — to coordinate the existing School Technology Committee with the Town Technology Committee.
• Additionally two or three interested residents should be on the committee.

These should be voluntary town positions.

The budget for such a committee would need to be at least: $367.00 ($48.00 of one-time fees + $418 for 11 months of operation, assuming that the site begins in January) for the first year and $348.00 for subsequent years of operation (assuming no price increases). Note that since TIAC is providing the WebMaster account at no charge that is a savings of $348.00 per year.

Some possible people who could write and/or prepare existing documents that are already in electronic format to be placed on the Dunbarton Web site could include:

• Students
• Boards and committee members
• Volunteers

By far, the most popular feature of the Internet is electronic mail (or, e-mail, for short). E-mail allows one person to write a "letter" to another person that almost instantly appears in his or her mailbox, an electronic folder of messages that a person then reads through.

The above example addresses are know as mailboxes. Each mailbox would cost an additional $10.00 per month per mailbox.

The next logical step after e-mail is to set up a town network so that each PC used in the town offices can communicate with one another. Such a network is known as a local area network (LAN), and is nothing more than a piece of coaxial cable running to each PC. Each PC would need to have a network interface card (NIC) to plug the coaxial cable into. This is a simplified picture, but in essence this is all that is involved in connecting the town computers together.

With a network established, the town might want to look in to having a dedicate file server to store all of its information, protected by a network operating system such as Windows NT.

As can be seen, there is a lot that a Technology Committee could consider depending upon how technologically advanced Dunbarton wants to become. The level of automation would have to be balanced with what residents are willing to spend on technology and what other state agencies or other organizations the town would want to communicate with via the Internet (or the Web).

It is also very important that whatever approach is taken for a Dunbarton Web site, providing e-mail for the town employees, creating a network in the town, etc. that a carefully thought-out plan be devised before just "jumping" in. While it may seem technically very simple to bring up a Dunbarton Web site, the decisions made for this Web site have ramifications for future technological efforts the town may wish to pursue in the future.