Setting Their Sites on Internet

By FRANK MESSINA

Dec. 21, 1997 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

When Terry Bills began spreading the gospel of the Internet to city officials at regional conferences two years ago, it was hard winning converts.

The message was simple: “You shouldn’t have to go downtown for a dog license,” said Bills, a principal planner for the Southern California Assn. of Governments, who told anyone who would listen that “the home page technology is there to provide any number of services to citizens.”

At first, few cities listened. Even in Orange County, with its burgeoning computer industry, only a handful of cities had their own home pages at the start of this year.

But with the blazing speed of a fiber optic cable linkup, much of Orange County went online in 1997. More than a dozen cities launched a Web site in the past year, giving 21 of 31 Orange County cities a presence on the Internet with several more planning to debut in the coming months.

Some home pages are in their beginning stages, offering little more than the address of City Hall.

But in Huntington Beach, for example, net surfers can watch video of beach-goers cruising the pier. Fountain Valley site users can locate the best restaurants in the city, while gorgeous sunset beach scenes are digitally stored on Seal Beach’s Web site.

“We have a computer-literate society and people are used to getting information over the Internet,” Mission Viejo City Clerk Ivy Joseph said. “They expect a city to provide that kind of information.”

One of the leaders of municipal Web site development is the city of Ontario, where building permits can be filed over the Internet. Ontario also lists voting precincts, vacant lots available for development and maps showing where utility lines are buried.

What is currently available is just a small window to the future of municipal Web sites, officials said.

The future, they say, is likely to bring with it full video tours--via computer--that will entice tourists and businesses to visit and stay. Crime logs providing data on neighborhoods where home burglaries are all too common could be accessible with the click of a button, and interactive chat sessions with the City Council held during council meetings might not be too far off.

“Web sites are about interaction with the community,” said Laguna Niguel Councilman Mark Goodman, whose city unveiled its home page Dec. 1. “It’s going to bring a lot of people into communication with city government that normally wouldn’t have done it.”

Such a bright technological future might be a long way off for many cities, especially those satisfied just to be on the Internet.

The basic design used by most cities holds little more than a picture of the city seal, a few paragraphs of information and an agenda of the upcoming City Council meeting.

“Maintaining a good Web site is a serious, full-time process,” Bills said. “If a city is going to take a site seriously, they need to assign a dedicated staff person.”

Techno fear and lack of familiarity with computers keeps some cities from committing to the Internet, he said.

“There has been a great deal of initial misunderstanding about the Internet,” Bills said. “The great fear was that employees would download haiku poetry from Japan, or dirty pictures.”

But officials including Dana Point City Manager John B. Bahorski see the city home page as a time-saving tool.

“I see [Web sites] as part of a movement toward a paperless society,” said Bahorski, who expects to have a Dana Point home page ready by March. “With a Web site, you don’t have to call City Hall to find out about city codes. It’ll tell you right on the screen.”

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Cities Go Way of the Web

Two-thirds of Orange County’s cities have their own World Wide Web sites delivering varying amounts and kinds of information. Of the 10 that do not have sites, three will be active by June and a fourth, Irvine, is in the design process. A guide to the cities’ sites and plans:

City: Site Address/Plan

Anaheim: www.anaheim.net

Brea: www.ci.brea.ca.us

Buena Park: www.buenapark.com

Costa Mesa: www.cityofcostamesa.com

Cypress: Plans to have Web page by June

Dana Point: Plans to have Web page by March

Fountain Valley: www.fountainvalley.org

Fullerton: www.ci.fullerton.ca.us

Garden Grove: www.ci.garden-grove.ca.us

Huntington Beach:

www.ci.huntington-beach.ca.us