24 April 2007

mayor roy blames city council for unupdated city website

**updated 2:40 pm cdt tuesday 24 april 2007**

mayor jacques roy administration responds:

Mayor Roy never said or implied that the Council is thwarting us from updating the website; he used the word recalcitrant about an entirely different subject.

Indeed, we are planning a major website overhaul, and as you correctly point out, the site is still regularly updated, although the Mayor hasn't uploaded a welcome letter yet.

As you may know, the City recently changed its logo, and because of this, we're going to redesign the color scheme and layout of the website. The new site, which should be launched within a couple of months, will be modeled after NYC's website, a very simple, fluid webpage that is easily and constantly updated. Coming very soon, the site will feature a section entitled "Office of the Mayor," which will feature press releases, biographical information, and more.

Additionally, we will be launching a number of other pages-- an Economic Development page filled with information on doing business in Alexandria, a tourism or visitor's page that will complement the CVB's site, and a new website for the Historical District Preservation Commission, which will showcase our historic properties.

This is all work in progress, and you're absolutely right: The Council doesn't have anything to do with whether or not we update the site. Mayor Roy knows this. I know this. Unfortunately, the article did make that mistaken implication.

One more thing: the way the previous administration had the website set up doesn't really work for us; any time you want to update the site, you have to call KJA and ask them to upload content. We want to ensure that we can upload content in-house.

- Lamar

--
Lamar White, Jr.
Assistant to the Mayor
City of Alexandria, Louisiana

note: hyperlinks were added by wst...
----ORIGINAL POST----
saturday in a continuing series of our posts about alexandria, louisiana mayor jacques roy and the alexandria city council's relentless violation of alexandrian's civil liberties and privacy rights regarding the coming installation of big brother red light spy cameras we happened to mention that in 138 days the city's "official" website hasnt been updated to include the mayoral welcome letter.

monday morning we changed the date of the post in order to bring it up to the top of the page again. later we went over to the town talk's website and was surprised to see that billy gunn in his weekly "city notebook" column mentioned that the city of alexandria website hadnt been updated either.

town talk snip:
City's Web site a little behind
Alexandria's official Web site, www.cityofalexandriala.com, needs some work.

Click on "press releases," and two items pop up, the most current one posted June 26, 2006. And clicking on the release titled "Red, White and Blue at the Zoo" does nothing.

Click on the "Mayoral Welcome" icon, and all you get is "Coming soon a letter from Mayor Jacques Roy."

Roy said the Web site and government access Channel 4 need revamping and that he's being hampered by a recalcitrant City Council.
we dont know (or care) if mr. gunn got his idea from us or if it was just a coincidence although we do know that the town talk visits this blog from time to time:

the word "recalcitrant" was interesting to us though, because thats a word you dont hear everyday and one that even with our voluminous vocabulary we werent entirely familiar with. so we thought we had better look that word up because at first glance it seemed to us that the mayor was saying that the city council has a calcium deficiency...or something.

according to dictionary.reference.com:
re·cal·ci·trant –adjective
1. resisting authority or control; not obedient or compliant; refractory.
2. hard to deal with, manage, or operate.
word net: 1.stubbornly resistant to authority or control; "a fractious animal that would not submit to the harness"; "a refractory child" [syn: fractious]
hmm pretty strong; all these word games aside though, would the mayor have us believe that the city's website cannot be updated without the city council approval. we must have missed that ordinance. furthermore, when one looks back a few months at the city's "official website" you can easily see that the website has been updated from time to time. last month the que'in on the red logo together with a link to its website was added to the citys "official" website and its since been removed and replaced with logo's, links to and someone has constructed custom web pages on the city's "official" website for:

so the mayor would have us believe that a simple text letter cant be copied and pasted into that mayoral welcome web page and published without the city councils approval?

a simple whois check of alexandria's "official" website shows that its not even registered to the city of alexandria - its registered to david pugh's kja communications group, inc.

Registrant:
KJA Communications Group (CITYOFALEXANDRIALA-COM-DOM)
4615 Parliament Drive
Suite 200
Alexandria, Louisiana 71303
USA
+1.3184425966
+1.3184425991
admin@kjaonline.com

Domain Name: CITYOFALEXANDRIALA.COM

Administrative Contact:
KJA Communications Group admin@kjaonline.com
4615 Parliament Drive
Suite 200
Alexandria, Louisiana 71303
USA
+1.3184425966
Fax- +1.3184425991

Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
KJA Communications Group admin@kjaonline.com
4615 Parliament Drive
Suite 200
Alexandria, Louisiana 71303
USA
+1.3184425966
Fax- +1.3184425991

Record last updated on 31-May-2006.
Record expires on 21-Jun-2007.
Record created on 21-Jun-2001.

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