MANSFIELD — Property records and a check on who’s in jail are the two most popular pages on the Richland County government website.
That’s according to Matt Hill, head of the county IT department, who met Thursday morning with county commissioners.
“The auditor’s page and ‘who’s in jail?’ are the most visited pages,” Hill said, pointing to the fact visitors most often go to the property ownership page of the auditor’s section.
“I’ve been tracking the county website for about three years and (the auditor’s page) has consistently the highest traffic,” Hill said.
Hill met with commissioners to discuss adding an “elected officials” page to the website that would offer more “uniform” head shots of the leaders, biographical information and contact information.
“A lot of county websites have an elected officials directory,” Commissioner Tony Vero said. “It really assists the public. I had sent out an email to other (Richland County) elected officials and they were very supportive of that.”
Along the way, however, Hill showed commissioners different elements of the county’s website, which went live two months ago with a new content management system, operated by Evogov.com, a company based in Parker, Colo.
Hill, who said the county site receives between 25,000 and 50,000 page views per month, took commissioners through a tour of the site, more interactive and user-friendly than when it was hosted by Revize.com, a Michigan company.
“We used to host our website here a few years ago. That’s probably not the best way to do it. So we went cloud-hosted and picked a company to host it for us,” Hill said.
“A few years ago, we went with (Revize). They didn’t have the features that we wanted to show you guys and get out to the public. So when our contract was up with them, we went with a company called Evogov.
“We just signed with them and the website actually went live July 1. Evogov has so many other features that we liked,” Hill said.
One interactive example he cited was the ability to put requests for proposals and bids on the county site.
“So companies can actually log in with their own username and password (and) put in their bid. Once the bid is closed, if they submit a bid, it will email that bid to whichever department gets it.
“So if it was IT, we would get an email saying, ‘Hey, these people put in bids.’ We can’t see the bid until afterwards. So it kind of keeps it legal,” Hill said.
He also cited a portion of the site devoted to the dog warden’s office. People can complete an adoption application online and submit it directly from the site.
Residents can also send the warden’s office concerns about a stray dog and include information like photos and location. That effort would generate a text message and an email to the dog warden.
“That was kind of the whole point of this company. Everything is interactive with them,” Hill said.
Also on Thursday, commissioners learned the county faces an estimated $250,000 increase in employee health insurance costs for 2023, based on information provided by the County Employee Benefits Consortium of Ohio.
Commissioners met with a CEBCO official on Aug. 30 and were told to expect an increase based on the fact the organization paid out more in claims than it collected in premiums from the county and its employees in the period from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022.
The total cost increase will be between 6.3 and 6.7 percent, officials said.
In response, commissioners approved increasing employee premiums in accordance with the caps provided by collective bargaining agreements, with similar treatment for non-union employees.
Vero said he projects the general fund cost for employee health insurance premiums will be about $3.8 million in 2022, which would project to $4.05 million in 2023.
That cost was $4.12 million in 2021 when the county averaged 277 general fund employee enrollees. It’s averaging 258 such employees in 2022.
