TUPELO - The city's two mayoral candidates have vowed to revitalize the municipal Web site if they're elected.

Democrat Doyce Deas and her Republican opponent, Jack Reed Jr., said the site could become Tupelo's one-stop-shop for people to get information and conduct business with the city.

As it is, it contains a wealth of information but remains somewhat stagnant.

Launched in 2002, www.ci.tupelo.ms features a home page with links to Tupelo's attractions, as well to a city biography and history. It also connects visitors to each municipal department, where they can find basic data about the mayor and City Council, utility costs, millage rates, permit fees, property taxes, municipal ordinances, zoning maps, city phone numbers and more.

Lacking, though, are daily updates about city activities: No links to City Council meeting minutes or agendas; no reports from committees or commissions; no news about ongoing projects.

A click on the link for press releases opens a document that simply reads "None."

Deas and Reed said that would change under their administrations.

"The Web site needs to be upgraded and we need to put everything we possibly can on it," Deas said. "All the policies and procedures, phone numbers and addresses, there should be a message from the mayor and department heads every week. There needs to be a place where you can lodge a complaint or ask a question and expect an immediate response. We ought to be able to pay bills and get permits on there."

It's an achievable goal, but those who have undertaken that project say it will take an internal culture change to make it happen.

In Oxford, for example, even after Mayor Richard Howorth decided to make the city site more current, employees still forget to feed updates to IT chief Bob Opalko for Internet posting.

"I still kind of have to get after them," said Opalko, who helped design and improve Oxford's site since he joined the city more than a decade ago.

Oxford's Web site has many of the same features offered in Tupelo, but it also has a calendar of events, an online suggestions and concerns form, board meeting agendas and an archive of meeting minutes.

Opalko said the site logs some 3,000 visitors weekly. Tupelo doesn't track its Web site traffic and has no way of knowing how many people visit, said J.C. Aaron with the Three Rivers Planning amp& Development District, which hosts Tupelo's Web site.

Costs for Oxford and Tupelo appear about the same: Both cities have two main IT staffers who maintain the Web sites in addition to their other technological duties. Both cities also pay for Web hosting as part of a package deal that also includes Internet access and e-mail accounts for employees.

Tupelo spends about $400 monthly for the package, said city IT chief Lerland Kindt. That price remains fixed regardless of what the Web site features, Aaron said, so a newer and more dynamic site won't cost the city anything more to host.

If the new mayor scrapped the site and redesigned from scratch, costs would quickly mount, however. Tupelo spent roughly $6,000 to design the current site about seven years ago. It was created by WTVA. The television station had a Web designer at the time who did the city's site at a break-even fee, said Phil Sullivan, who was Tupelo's chief operations officer back then and now serves as WTVA's station manager.

"It was a pretty good deal," Sullivan said.

Fees vary depending on the design company and client needs, but large Web sites like Tupelo's easily cost several thousands of dollars to design, according to Internet research.

Reed said he likes the current site and thinks it just needs tweaking.

"I'm not interested in criticizing what we've got," Reed said. "I think we can just make more information available on it. One of the things I'm interested in doing is having a periodical report. I've looked at other Web sites and communications from other cities, and there are a lot of opportunities to be more proactive and feature some things that are going on, like projects and other positive things."

Whatever the change and whoever the mayor, a successful city Web site needs a champion, said former Mayor Larry Otis, who ran the city when the current site went live.

"You have to have somebody mind it every day, and we didn't have the ability to constantly upgrade it all the time," Otis said. "And so I hope the new administration coming in will be able to put that kind of effort into it, because the Web page is really the front door of the city. It says, here we are, come in and let us show you our house."

Contact Emily Le Coz at (662) 678-1588 or emily.lecoz@djournal.com.