Yorktown to redesign town website

YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y.—Yorktown's website (yorktownny.gov) is getting a makeover.

Town Planner Robyn Steinberg appeared before the Town Board earlier this month to present her review of options for updating the site, which was last redesigned in 2020 but now uses outdated software.

Steinberg said key priorities for the new site include adding the ability to edit the front page directly, replacing restrictive templates, and increasing accessibility and flexibility. The company that did the 2020 redesign, Municode, was acquired by CivicPlus, but Steinberg is recommending a new vendor for the latest update.

Her preferred option is a platform called GovStack, which specializes in government services. A GovStack redesign will cost $13,509, with an annual maintenance fee of $6,234—bringing the total first-year cost to $19,743. All of the options presented included a 5 percent increase in the annual fee after the first year.

Steinberg also showed the board an accessibility widget designed to assist people with disabilities such as dyslexia or visual impairment. She noted that if the board chooses GovStack, Yorktown would likely be the first municipality in Westchester County to use the platform—a distinction Councilman Sergio Esposito said could positively set Yorktown apart from other towns. Lachterman added that the board would aim to get a resolution on this week’s agenda to approve the plan and move forward.

“The reason to change is simply that we have to,” Steinberg later told Yorktown News. “If we stay with our current provider, the website has to be migrated to their platform by the end of the year and that will cost the town more money going forward. For that reason, I looked around at other providers and found that we could get more flexibility and customization opportunities for a similar cost and make our site even better.”

She added that the current site is not the most user-friendly.

“There are large menus that the majority of the public does not use, and the search function doesn’t really work,” she said.

She added that with the current site, department staff must fit their content into “a rigid template format” that limits what they can do. She hopes the redesign will allow departments to display information in ways that are unique and better suited to their needs.