Wellesley ramping up new, user-friendly Town website

July 23, 2017 by Deborah Brown Leave a Comment

The Town of Wellesley is debuting a new Town website (www.wellesleyma.gov) in the coming weeks. Wellesley has partnered with CivicPlus to bring a fresh new look and user-friendly design to the site, which will be live by August 7. CivicPlus has built more than 2000 government websites across the country, including many recent winners of the MA Municipal Association’s annual website awards.

During the past nine months, a representative working group of Town managers researched current municipal website best practices and listened to feedback from public meetings on the Unified Plan. The group analyzed statistics on hits, searches, and downloads from our current Town website, and worked with the team at CivicPlus to build a site that is expected to be much easier to use and more intuitive to navigate. More specifically, the new site:

Provides quick access to the most frequently requested services and information
Aggregates agendas / minutes for most Town Boards and Committees on a single page
Is built with a mobile-friendly responsive design
Offers a personalized user experience, allowing you to create an account and engage only in information you care about

What you need to know…

The Town’s main web address (www.wellesleyma.gov) will not change, but you may need to update existing bookmarks to interior pages in your browser’s settings.
If you are a current subscriber to one of our website’s active news lists (www.wellesleyma.gov/subscriber), we suggest that you set your spam blocker to allow for mail from [email protected]. Once the new site goes “live”, we encourage you to create an account and explore the wider variety of available subscription options.
Departmental mailing lists (maintained by the NRC, COA, and others) will migrate to the CivicPlus platform over the next few months. Current subscribers to these lists will be contacted separately with specifics.
Emergency, traffic, and utility alerts will continue to be sent separately by the Wellesley Police Department, and you can sign up for these at www.wellesleypolice.com.

A “refreshed” website is an important step in the Town’s efforts to deliver the best available online municipal services and to increase transparency. Coming soon in FY18, Town managers will work with State officials to develop a Citizen Engagement Communications Plan, and will explore options to support online permit and license applications.

For questions or concerns about the new website, or to suggest new online features or functionality, please contact the Town of Wellesley Information Technology department at [email protected].

Wellesley Girls Who Code connect with Canadian Prime Minister

July 19, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

The Wellesley chapter of Girls Who Code attended a hackathon at the Providence Convention Center on July 14 and attracted some interest from attendees of the National Governors’ Association meeting that was taking place at the same time. Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the time to learn about the Girls Who Code projects and provided a photo opp as well. Girls Who Code Wellesley Canada Trudeau

Local club members who attended were: Rachel White; Jade Mei Foland; Adhvika Arunkumar; Sarah Hatch; and Ruari Sadasiv.

(Info shared by Lakshmi Sadasiv)

Wellesley MLP to shed light on reducing electricity use

June 9, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

In response to public interest, the Wellesley Municipal Light Plant will hold a public forum to discuss the inclusion of renewable energy in the Light Plant portfolio and the Light Plant initiatives to help the Town and residents reduce their electricity use. Co-sponsored by the Board of Selectmen and the Sustainable Energy Committee.

When: Thursday, June 15, 7pm

Where: 4 Municipal Way, Wellesley

Wellesley embraces the Sharing Economy

May 23, 2017 by bbrown Leave a Comment

The Sharing Economy, epitomized by the likes of Uber and Airbnb, has made its mark on Wellesley as much as anywhere, both in terms of residents using such services and being involved in such enterprises. I interviewed a slew of people, from a Babson student who has started a car-sharing service with his twin brother, to a local designer and an economist, both of whom are big believers in home sharing. You can read more in Getting Their Fair Share in the summer edition of WellesleyWeston Magazine, which features a kid flying a kite on the cover, and has more Wellesley stories inside, including on the Wellesley Chinese Language School and Wellesley artist Jean Wiecha.

WellesleyWeston Magazine

Donate your old cellphones to help Wellesley & save the world

May 17, 2017 by admin Leave a Comment

The Wellesley Middle School PTO and Wellesley Green Team are partnering to run a cellphone recycling fundraiser that they say will help prevent you from destroying the world with all that nasty stuff (arsenic, lead, etc.) those devices attached to our ears and mouths are filled with. Funds raised through recycling the materials will go to Wellesley Middle School PTO programs, which supports student programming as well as professional development.

The organizations cite research that found millions of old cellphones are stockpiled in U.S. households and millions more are discarded annually. What’s more, mining for the metals used to build smartphones and other gadgets is a huge source of pollution.

The event takes place Monday, June 5 – Friday, June 9. Your used item will be recycled in accordance with EPA regulations. After collection, your recycled phones and devices will go through a triage process to determine their status for reuse. At that time customer data is removed (though you might wanna take things into your own hands and wipe the devices before handing them over). Devices will either be refurbished or shredded for precious metals reclamation. In this process, devices are shredded and metals are extracted for asset recovery.

WMS will collect the following items:

Cell phones of any age or condition * Wall or car chargers * iPods * Digital Cameras * Bluetooths * Air Cards * Leather Cases * Plastic Cases * Paper or CD Manuals

The week of 6/5 – 6/9, please drop off any items you would like to recycle in the drop bins at the Wellesley Middle School, Kingsbury Street and Donizetti Street entrances, in the main office, or hand them to a team of collectors who will come by your car at school pickup between 3:00 p.m. and 3:20 pm. after school at WMS.

If you’d like to volunteer to take part in the event, sign up here: www.SignUpGenius.com/go/10C0C4AA9AB2FABFA7-cell