BY JEFF PAYNE

VOICE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

With the internet finding its way into more homes and businesses, local government officials are reaching their constituency more effectively.

Local governments have set up Web sites that carry everything from art work to historical and biographical information about them to applications for various permits. With new sites being added every day as usage increases, local users of the Internet can expect to be able to do more local business on their computers in the near future.

School districts lead the charge, with every local district having a site in some form.

At Marysville's site, local residents can get information on each individual school in the district, e-mail teachers and staff and even download the district's logo.

Last week, Anchor Bay's site announced the district's new "science guy," Jim Alvaro. It also provides links to information about the district and its schools.

Other sites aren't as elaborate but still provide valuable information, such as the "Supervisor's Corner" site from Casco Township Supervisor Karen Holk to that township's residents.

One of the more elaborate non-school sites belongs to the city of Richmond. The site is still under construction, according to its home page.

Individual departments in municipalities have also set up their own sites. A search of Macomb Township, Michigan, turns up the township's parks and recreation site. It offers upcoming events, job listings, classes and trips that are planned.

On the same page is a short narrative describing recent developments in one of the local focus issues, development of a downtown area.Darwin Parks, Richmond city manager said that the city is quickly building its site.While the city currently does not advertise it,he expects that to change in the coming months."Our Web site is still under construction,"he explained."We have our home page and several other departments out there."Richmond offers links to several city departments and the city manager' s office.

The site is maintained by city employees, which Parks said results in a considerable savings to taxpayers."It costs about $500 per year," he said of the site. "Some people pay thousands per year." He said the city will continue to build its site in-house, as long as employees who know how To do such work are at city hall. "One of the most important things is to have someone who can keep it continually maintained," he added.'The worst thing that can happen to a site is to have stale information."

Another active and informative site is the Marine City home page, which contains information ranging from meeting minutes to city departments. Future agendas and planning information are available,along with a wealth of biographical and historical tidbits. And the site is continually maintained. As of April 1, the last update had been a week earlier. Most local municipalities lag behind school districts, which have Web sites that are created through administrative and student cooperation.Some are more basic while others provide a litany of information, ranging from historical to biographical to every day.

The L'Anse Creuse site contains links ranging from the alumni association  to the district's vision of technology. New Haven has a calendar of the year's events right on its home page.Chippewa Valley also has an alumni link. Each local school district has its own home page.

Those in  Macomb County ,including Anchor Bay, Armada, Chippewa Valley, L' Anse Creuse and Richmond, can be accessed through the Macomb County Intermediate District's site while Algonac, East China, Marysville and Memphis are linked to the St. Clair County Intermediate School District's site . County-wide information can also be obtained from those intermediate district sites.

Another way to locate local school districts, municipalities or just about anything else is through using a commercial search engine.Those vehicles accept key words and in return provide a list of possible matches.John Armstrong, L'Anse Creuse superintendent said that his district is hoping to increase parent interaction through the site "I think that what you're going to see in the not-so-far future is more interaction with the parent community," he explained .The district's central administration offices recently had unique contact with a former student who graduated in the1960s and now works as a journalist in Nairobi.

He wrote us about his experiences in school and how our district prepared him for his current job "Armstrong said L'Anse Creuse, like most other school districts, has administrative guide lines for what goes on the site. A webmaster group exists in each building The group's efforts are forwarded  to the district webmaster, who posts that information on the site. School districts and local governments, like other Web sites, do have guide lines to follow.

And there is also danger. Recently, someone downloaded Anchor Bay's homepage. The"suspect" a word that superintendent Dr. Juliana Texley used because she said the district is serious about pressing criminal charges once the person's identity becomes known  made some disparaging changes before reposting it as a spurious Web site. School officials turned their information over to New Baltimore Police   detectives, who are investigating.

We wish to thank the Voice for giving the City of Marine City the permission to use this article that was published on April 7 1999.

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