Town awards contract to develop new municipal website

Written By PETER RICHARDSON

At Monday's meeting of Shelburne Council, members heard from Town Planner Steve Wever regarding an application from Tribute Homes for a second, Pre-servicing Agreement, to allow them to do further work prior to applying for necessary final approvals for a new development in the community.

They also asked that the required security deposit be reduced to 50 percent from 110 percent, as ordained ninth by-law. The new work was to include constructing the underground services and the roads for a new subdivision, referencing and listing the engineering drawings for some, the aforementioned security deposit and identifying required approvals and scheduling provisions.

Mr. Wever explained that many municipalities, since they are not obligated to assume the infrastructure and no lots are registered, request a lower deposit than Shelburne currently requests.

Most require 50 percent of the costs of the proposed work. He recommended that for this agreement, Shelburne accept 50 percent plus a 15 percent contingency and the HST.

Further to the Pre-servicing agreement, Tribute requested a Supplemental agreement to cover the Raising of noise barriers for some 69 of the proposed lots, which would back onto the existing industrial lands surrounding the development.

These noise mitigation measures, would have to be designed and installed to the Town's satisfaction, with the 110 percent deposit, easements for service and maintenance, engineering certification for compliance with regulated standards  an eight-year maintenance period for developer responsibility for the measures, provisions to change the heights should circumstances change, notifications to the buyers regarding their responsibility to own and maintain the fences and warning clauses within the purchase agreements and registered on title.

The fences, which primarily would surround three sides of the development, would stand 15 feet high and be made of aluminium frames and cedar boards. Mr. Wever however, pointed out that this was a worst case scenario height pending a decision from KT World as to their future production plans.

He said that, at the moment, the company was not planning to resume production in it's previous locations and that this would mitigate the noise abatement required considerably. If so, the height of the majority of the fencing would be dramatically reduced.

Despite some concerns regarding the length of the developer maintenance period, possibly not long enough and the positioning of the townhomes along Main St and Hwy. 89, Council accepted the requests as presented and authorized the issuance of the required permissions.

Town website redesign

Finally, a report was heard from Carol Maitland, of the EDC regarding the redesign of the Town website.

The current website has come under considerable criticism over it's deficiencies and it being difficult to navigate. Council had issued a RFP to source a new website design and Carol was there to present the results. She told Council, that four companies had returned proposals, three in Canada and one from California.

Of these, the presentation from eSolutions of Waterloo Ontario ticked the most boxes, in the RFP. Over the last 5 years, eSolutions has received 130 awards and has prepared award winning websites for many communities, including, Guelph, Cambridge, Kingsville, Prince George, Pickering and some 350 other community partners.

The proposal came in under the Town's proposed budget, of $51,200, at only $42,124.64, including HST and Council voted to accept the report and to grant the project to eSolutions, for the quoted price.