Meaford council at its regular meeting held on January 11 approved a recommendation from CAO Frank Miele to move forward with the process to design a new "web portal" for the municipality.

Miele explained to council that the web portal is an incredibly important tool for the community as it attempts to attract new businesses and visitors to the area.

"The web portal is an integral marketing tool - 98% of selectors look at a website before they ever go face-to-face with a community. Our website needs a facelift - it's really antiquated," said Miele.

The municipality's website has had the same basic look for the past decade, which is an eternity in the online world.

Council approved Miele's report that recommended hiring F3 eBusiness Inc. to redesign and re-launch the website for Meaford. Several months ago Miele secured significant grant funding from OMAFRA to pay for the website redesign. The project will not have an impact on the operating budget for the municipality.

Miele said dozens of firms responded to Meaford's RFP for the website redesign. F3 eBusiness Inc. scored 93% in the evaluation process. The total cost of the bid by F3 is $29,506. The CAO said he expects the project to be finished by the end of March.

The CAO also informed council that he will be forming a community stakeholders group to assist with the website redesign. Miele said he wanted to engage as many interested community groups as possible during the process. Three members of council and Mayor Francis Richardson will also serve on the stakeholders group.

Miele explained that once the redesign is complete - municipal staff will be able to change and update the website in-house - rather than relying on a service provider for those tasks.

"I will bring council completely up-to-date once we have some preliminary designs," he said.