Directors want to allocate a total of $150,000 in the 2025 and 2026 budgets to modernize the Regional District of Nanaimo's website.
Deliberations for the RDN's 2025-29 financial plan began Tuesday, Nov. 5, and among the line items is money for its web page. If approved, $60,000 would be spent in 2025 and $90,000 in 2026, said Christina Crabtree, RDN general manager of corporate services and transportation, at the committee of the whole meeting.
The site was most recently upgraded around 2016, noted a staff report, and preliminary findings of an accessibility audit, to be released later this month, found deficiencies, including the fact it is not mobile-friendly, and some of the content doesn't follow accessibility guidelines. In addition, the site is hard to navigate and is missing bylaws and policies.
"When the audit for the website was done, it was determined that in order to fix those accessibility features, it would cost so much money that it wouldn't be worth doing that … this particular site was built for the time when that was not the most mobile-friendly site," said Crabtree. "So another big improvement both for accessibility, [and] the community at large, would be to have a site that was designed and appropriately responsive for those mobile devices."
The first phase of implementation, scheduled for 2025, will involve design work, with feedback from the public, staff and directors and decisions about elements of the site. Website development and launch is hoped to take place in 2026, prior to the next local government election.
There have been close to 1.2 million page views over the last year, according to the report, which added that more than half of the page views came from mobile devices.
Directors gave unanimous approval to the proposal at the meeting.
Staff presented an aggregated financial plan at the Nov. 5 meeting and directors are scheduled to vote on the 2025-29 financial plan in December, with adoption expected in March.
