January 13, 2004

Re: Southold Town Website

To the Editor,

Every page of the Southold Town website states that “The official website of the Southold Town Hall” is “Designed and Maintained by the Southold Town Data Processing Department”. Yet the contents of southoldtown.northfork.net are incomplete, unorganized, obscured by bad graphic design and totally lacking any overall sense of design. Southold Town Data Processing Department has not even posted a page about itself. Neither the Supervisor nor the Southold Town Board have their own webpage. The Supervisor has inappropriately appropriated the best part of the website, the top of the home page. This prime piece of virtual real estate should belong to the public.

The website has the potential to be the most effective and the least expensive way for people who can not spend all their time in Town Hall to learn about and contribute to the process of government in Southold Town. Web technology has developed over the past few years, and has already proven itself to be capable of delivering revolutionary improvements in how documentation is managed and communication is accomplished by local governments. For the foreseeable future, paper records will still need to be kept and accessed. But, the time has come that it obviously makes sense for information to be stored and retrieved via the web. Generally, the more a government agency conducts the business of the people in open ways the more ethics and the public interest are likely to prevail and vice versa.

The sad state of the Southold Town website is strange considering the fact that Southold Town Supervisor, Joshua Y. Horton, is relatively young and fairly conversant with browsing the web and using email. I was surprised when Supervisor Horton told me that he has received nothing but positive feedback on the website from everyone else and he thinks it is fine the way it is. Who is he listening to? The mystery became understandable to me when Supervisor Horton told me that he knows nothing about “website technicalities”, and that he has neither the time nor desire to learn anything. Supervisor Horton also told me nothing can be done because there is not one penny in the entire 2004 budget for developing the website.

With all due respect I believe that Southold Town can not afford not to spend the approximately $2,400 it would cost to produce a functional website. I do not believe that money is the issue. Apparently the Supervisor prefers to be the only one in the know. Can we trust him alone?

Benja Schwartz
1845 Fleetwood Road
Cutchogue NY, 11935
631.734.5093
eview@eastcreekwebs.com